


Circus

by LizzyGal



Series: Toxic [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Arranged Marriage, Asshole steve rogers, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain Hydra, Come as Lube, Dark, Dark!Steve, Dirty Talk, Explosions, F/M, Gratuitous Smut, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Steve Rogers, Murder, NSFW, Nipple Piercings, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Office Blow Jobs, Office Sex, Older Man/Younger Woman, Oral Sex, Profanity, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Shameless Smut, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Violence, dark themes, hydra!steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:28:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyGal/pseuds/LizzyGal
Summary: :::Part Three in my Hydra!Steve Saga:::A typical day at the office for Captain Hydra and his wife.Or is it?:::The usual warning for this series.:::Part One isn't really Dark!Steve, but it is Hydra!Steve. Dark!Steve will be back shortly for Part two of Circus. Part one has a explosion, hints at violence, mentions some difficult and insensitive topics. Profanity too.::::::Part Two Warnings: Murder, killing, several killings and profanity.:::
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Reader
Series: Toxic [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857811
Comments: 138
Kudos: 152





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> :::The usual warning for this series.:::
> 
> :::Part One isn't really Dark!Steve, but it is Hydra!Steve. Dark!Steve will be back shortly for Part two of Circus. Part one has a explosion, hints at violence, mentions some difficult and insensitive topics. Profanity too.:::

Somewhat distractedly, you filed your newly manicured nude nails behind your desk. 

You were always restless on mornings when the tactical team went out on a full-blown raid. When they wore all their armor, and you knew guns would be involved and even though Steve had incredibly accelerated healing, he wasn’t bullet proof. 

Now, you weren’t about to say you loved your husband.

No, not that, never.

You were, however, fond of the man. You would admit that he’d grown on you. You enjoyed your time spent together and were even willing to openly say, that you didn’t regret marrying him.

Love?

No, never.

Nope.

Once more, as you filed, crossing your legs yet again under your desk, your eyes darted up towards the closed door of Steve’s office. It was right across from Director Pierce’s in the security office. As if he were the official mascot for Hydra or something.

Behind you, Pierce’s door was shut too.

Which left you to man the department.

So, you tilted your office phone in its receiver, so you couldn’t get any inter-office calls. You’d finished your trashy romance novel and ate your pre-lunch snack. Now you were onto your nails. Which, if you had to say, were perfect already. But you’d already touched up your matte red lipstick in the bathroom. It was the shade of red that Steve preferred. Your hair wasn’t moving anytime in the near future, due to all the pins and product you used to keep it in the up-do. Minus the few curls you allowed to artfully escape.

Someone cleared their throat.

You looked up to see a most unimpressive male figure in a suit. A wrinkled suit that didn’t fit him too well. Off the rack, was your determination. He was a basic, office worker, Hydra sycophant, if you’d ever seen one.

Which led you to slow your filing and raise a single eyebrow. Just one.

Hopefully he would take the hint and beat it.

“I need to speak with Director Pierce.”

“You need to make an appointment,” was your response.

“I tried, but your phone’s been busy for the past few days.”

An unimpressed noise came from you.

“Is Director Pierce in his office now?”

You frowned and looked back down to your manicure. “Director Pierce’s Calendar isn’t open until the fourteenth. You’ll have to call and make an appointment.”

“I can’t make one now?”

You shook your head, then picked at the little thin black sash around your black tailored top. “Nope. Hydra policy is to make appointments over the phone. We follow the rules up here in the security office.”

This man was so not impressed. He looked pointedly at your nail file. 

You cocked your head, daring him to say something.

Distantly you heard the elevator doors open. Your heart kicked up a few beats.

Steve?

“Shouldn’t you be checking emails? Or something? Working?”

Oh he went there! He actually went there! You noticed the FedEx man turn the corner and upon realizing that it was not your husband, you turned your attention back to the soul before you, in the ill-fitting suit.

“Well…sir…I checked my emails and answered them, then sent out the necessary ones. I prepped Director Pierce for his morning meetings and the conference call he is on now. I’ve completed all the planning for the day, so until the afternoon meetings start up, I have nothing to do. What would you suggest? Do you have something for me to do?” Your head cocked the other way, as you waited, with baited breath for his response.

Up until the FedEx man approached with a box.

This led you to stand on your patent leather pumps. File in hand, you pointed to Mister Off-The-Rack with your nail tool. “Hold onto that thought Homes…” Your gaze returned to Captain FedEx, to whom you pointed a nude nail. “That goes to the mailroom.”

This new representative of FedEx stopped, frowned and looked at the box in his spiffy uniform. “Director Alexander Pierce…this is his office, right? Did I get the wrong floor again?”

You eyed the box in his hand like it was on fire.

Pointing most pointedly at the elevator in the distance, you informed FedEx. “Nah son. Do you not watch the news? Every night Hydra buildings are bombed. No packages come up here, unless they’ve been X-Rayed in the mailroom. Hop to and get down there, unless you wanna open that thing right here, while I go hide in the stairwell a few floors down.”

Both you and Steve had been surprised to see bombings every night on the news. Mostly of Hydra buildings and locations in the greater DC area, as well as other major cities, or targets, in the United States, Canada and Europe. Bombs that Steve wasn’t building. As he was taking a break from that, as he planned his big hunting weekend next month. Of lately, Steve had been learning how to use a compound bow in the basement of your house, as well as on drives out in the Virginia countryside over the weekends.

When Mister FedEx looked from you, to he who shopped off the rack, you grabbed your phone and pressed down on the receiver tongue threateningly. “Dude, I’ll straight up call security right now, for reals. You need to take that thing downstairs and far the hell away from me.”

Getting blown up was not how you wanted to spend your day.

You had far too much work to do, to die at the hands of the resistance, or even a disgruntled citizen who hated Hydra. Which in itself, would have been the very definition of ironic. Considering how many high-ranking members of Hydra went missing, or had died suddenly, at the hands of Captain Hydra. Paired with the amount of information you passed on to Steve and members of the resistance? The idea that you could get mistaken for the enemy was wildly insulting to you.

Again, you heard a ding from out in the elevator bank.

Please be Steve.

Steve could level a glare at both of the men at your desk, one that would send them running.

A recently manicured finger drifted towards your phone’s buttons when the FedEx man shifted in his shoes.

Finally, he raised his hand not holding the box.

“Ok, ok, mailroom’s downstairs?”

Your found it a bit odd that this deliveryman didn’t know where the mailroom was, but you were distracted, by the approaching sight of your younger brother, Peter. As usual, it broke off yet another piece of your heart.

Peter was so smart, so gifted in math and science. He should have been studying both in a prestigious university somewhere, far away from you and Steve. He should have been learning and expanding his horizons. Starting a new life in a city somewhere that he could blend into a sea of people.

Instead, he’d been picked to attend Hydra’s Security Academy because he was your brother, because his academic transcripts were so amazing, because his PT Tests were always off the charts. You suspected Alexander Pierce had suspicions about your younger brother and that was why he was in the academy. Why he had been one of five, hand selected, for an interning program within the Triskelion. Your suspicions were raised when Pierce had him pulled from the mailroom on his third day. So he could spend his internship in your offices.

Looking smart, dapper even, in starched khaki’s and a burgundy polo that had the Hydra octopus on the chest, with ‘Intern Peter Parker’ stitched beneath it. Peter approached your desk with his backpack slung over his shoulder. 

Peter did not seem at all concerned with the FedEx guy.

Your brothers brown eyes narrowed at Mister Off-The-Rack. When he noticed your younger brother, he stepped back from your desk. 

Since you were more concerned with watching that box make it onto the elevator, you hardly paid attention. 

Only when Peter spoke up, did your attention waver. “What are you doing up here again? I told you to stay away from my sister’s desk.” 

Stay away from your desk?

This led you to purse your lips and narrow your eyes in suspicion. Your words were for Peter, as you looked closer at this man. Who could have been any man on earth. A man you wouldn’t have looked again at, if you passed him on the street. “What do you mean? You told him to stay away from my desk?”

Off-The-Rack’s mouth moved.

Peter’s was quicker, as he ditched his backpack behind your desk and stood at your side. You could feel his body tense beside yours. You felt his fists clench when he brushed against you.

“He was up here yesterday. I caught him looking through your desk.”

No wonder Peter was ready to go. And you were ready to let him.

Your brother may have been young and lean, with the innocent face of an angel. But you had watched him train with your husband. You’d seen him start to hold his own and knew, he would have been able to kick this cat, from one end of the office space to the other, with ease.

“I wasn’t! I was not looking through your desk!”

Said cat could not have been more outraged if he tried. His mouth gaped as his face turned red, a vein began to pop at his temple.

“Are you calling my baby brother a liar? If so, I can pull up security footage to see.”

Off-The-Rack’s mouth clapped shut with a snap.

He thought about it, as Peter asked of you, as only he could. “You want me to escort him to the elevators and wait for security?”

Both you and Steve had impressed upon your brother, over and over, that he had to follow all the rules precisely. If he was going to continue with his vigilantism, he needed to keep a spotless record. He could not draw even a single bit of attention, towards the enhancements he’d acquired, when he got bit by that damn spider.

“I was just looking for your planner. I need to make an appointment with Director Pierce and was hoping…really, to see if I could leave a note on an opening. Nothing more. I promise, I’m not looking to cause a problem.”

Now you didn’t believe a word from this dudes lips. 

Still, you peered over at Peter. Whose nose was lifted in clear dubiousness at what Off-The-Rack had shared.

Noisily, you slammed your phone down.

“I take my planner with me wherever I go,” you seethed, then added, for good measure. “I’m not calling security this time. But I don’t want to see you back up here again.” And then you looked over at your brother, once more, “Make sure he gets on the elevator.”

Off-The-Rack hopped back and then made haste, as Peter walked out from around your desk. Which made you suspect that Peter had escorted him away from your desk the previous day.

Boy, were you glad you kept absolutely nothing of importance at your desk. Steve’s paranoia had served you well.

Since you were not the type to suffer in silence, give someone the benefit of the doubt or otherwise, you had big plans to tell Steve and get security footage if possible. The last thing you needed, was someone getting either suspicious of you and Steve, or a coworker creeping up on you.

Scowling, you plopped back down in your chair and watched Peter follow the man out and around the corner, towards the elevators.

This was so not what you needed.

Behind you, a door opened.

Director Pierce’s smooth voice floated out. “Did I hear Peter?”

You didn’t move, or look back. Nor did you plan to tell him about the snoop. If you told him, then he’d know. It was difficult enough to keep a secret when it was just you and Steve, now that Peter was sometimes involved, it was more difficult. Including Pierce was a hard no regardless.

“He’ll be right back Mister Pierce,” came from your mouth.

“Alexander,” he immediately corrected, as per his usual. “Tac Team back yet?”

“Not yet Mister Pierce,” was your answer.

Movement behind you made you look back at him, see him grab your brother’s backpack and set it up on your desk.

You remained silent. You pretended to not be bothered. You pretended that it was normal, for someone to be going through your brother’s stuff, meddling with his life, changing his path, altering Peter’s future.

Watching the older man unzip the backpack and reach in, pull out Peter’s planner, you were calm and collected. Even though you wanted to scream and rage at the blue-eyed silver fox. You wanted to slap his hands away from your brother’s things.

“Ah,” he smiled, his three-piece suit immaculate and well pressed. “Peter’s picked up another course. Combatives. Good for him. I was going to suggest it. Your brother has great initiative.”

Combatives had been something Steve and Peter came up with, when your brother began to build lean muscle, as a result of their time together. An excuse would be needed as your brother continued to train, learned to fight.

“At this rate, your brother will be spending his entire internship here and have a position on the day he graduates.” 

It was so so hard, but, you managed to smile.

You managed to sound not horrified at the idea. “Wow? Really? Peter? Out of everyone in his class?”

Fighting the urge to scream and throw your computer off your desk, you maintained that smile, as you watched Pierce thumb through Peter’s planner.

“Don’t be so surprised,” he smiled at you. “You are indispensable to me here in the office. It’s no surprise that Peter would prove himself just as competent and effective. I expect great things from him.”

But the worse had yet to come, as Pierce continued to flip through the planner and nod, smile, at whatever had been noted on pages. Which you knew Peter took copious notes on for that very reason. He casually let slide. Which led you to suspect it was not casual at all. “Hydra expects great things from your family and the next generation.”

You knew you looked horrified, and you couldn’t begin to feign any other expression.

Luckily, you were saved, again, by Peter.

“Peter! There you are! I see you’ve started taking Combatives. I thought you looked a bit different in your shirts.”

It was a good thing you were again sitting.

Humbly, quietly, Peter glanced down at the floor in response. “Uh, yes sir. I’ve been practicing, with Steve, at home and finally decided to try out. I didn’t want to overfill my plate earlier in the semester and be unable to focus on coursework.”

When Pierce motioned for Peter to come in his office, you were grateful.

When he called out to you, asking you to bring him and Peter some coffee, you weren’t salty at all. You still felt sick at his words. There was not a chance, in Santa’s fancy hell, that you were having a baby. Nor was there a chance, you’d let Hydra near yours if you had one.

***

Steve was silent on the way back to the security office.

Crammed in the elevator with the rest of the team, fully geared up, weapon in hand, shield strapped to his broad back, mask still covered the lower part of his face as he just seethed in anger, as always.

The black half mask covered his mouth and nose, allowing him that small bit of privacy.

He hated everyone one the team. He hated them all so much. Sure, he could act professional and pretend that everything was normal. But how he despised them with every atom in his body.

He hated stepping into the building.

He hated acting like he was a good Hydra soldier.

He hated wearing Hydra’s colors.

He hated what they had done to his shield, his home, his country, the world.

He was dirty and sweaty and mad. 

Every time he wore his now black and red suit, he felt dirty. He felt like a traitor. No matter how many showers he took, how many days passed, that feeling never passed.

When the elevator doors opened, Steve waited for his teammates to file out. He stood in the back, being one of the taller members and taking up so much space. Never interacting more than he had to, polite, downright cordial. Not about to let anyone think his reeducation hadn’t been complete.

Beneath the black carbon fiber, his mouth was set grimly and his nose twitched in a snarl. In the recesses of his imagination, he fanaticized about painting the walls of the elevator with their blood. How easy it would be to just slaughter them all.

Unfortunately, cameras.

Cameras were everywhere.

Nearly everywhere, anyway.

Following the team out, hearing heavy boots hit the polished floor with soft thuds, his suit heavy on his body, weapon hot beneath his gloved hand, Steve could only think about one thing that would ground him. It was the only thing that made him feel human these days. It was what he needed to ground himself, and he was needing more of it.

At the risk of becoming sentimental, Steve preferred to think of you as an obsession.

He was not in love. He wasn’t.

He was just experiencing a slight fixation, due to the stressful situation that he found himself in. Naturally, he needed to distract himself somehow. Sex released all kinds of chemicals in the brain that led to good happy sensations. Since Steve’s world had fallen to shit, why wouldn’t he seek out something that made him feel good? It was purely physical. You were young and attractive. He was enhanced and that included his appetites for food and water and exercise and sexual release. It was human nature. Sex was one thing the both of you could share, that hadn’t changed. Sex was sex. Both of you had a good time. What was the harm?

After missions, some team members would have a drink, or a smoke. Others would go eat and others would go work out. Every one of them burnt off residual adrenaline in different ways. 

You were seated behind your desk, when he eventually set eyes on you.

Almost immediately, Steve could tell that something was wrong and while his initial response was to go to you, ask you what was wrong.

Not in the office.

Not at work.

Not where people could see just how much he cared, how much he wanted to go to you and ask what was wrong. He didn’t want Hydra to know the extent of what he struggled with concerning you.

As quickly as your expression of alarm at the sight of him appeared, it was gone. You were back to taking notes as Director Pierce talked, with a collected, almost bored expression on your face.

Hell did you look good in black, red lips, your hair all sleek and pulled back for the big meeting later that day. When you’d be seated by Pierce taking notes, assisting him and doing whatever he asked of you. As much as Steve liked knowing exactly where you were during the daytime hours, sometimes, he really would have preferred if you were home. You being in the Triskelion when he wasn’t there…it made him nervous. It made the bile in his stomach roll.

“Captain Rogers! You’re back,” Pierce greeted, merely nodding at other members of the team, as they headed towards their offices in the back. “Will you be attending the Regional Security Heads meeting this afternoon?”

Steve glanced at you.

No reaction.

That clearly wasn’t what had been bothering you.

As if noticing for the first time, that Captain Hydra was armed and geared up from the mission, Pierce sighed. “Forgive me Captain. Why don’t you come back by here in say…thirty minutes? Go return your weapons to the armory and take ten to unwind. I’ll meet you in my office.”

And there it was.

Your eyes went down to your desk most pointedly.

Whatever was wrong was something with Pierce.

His attention then returned to you.

Like a good little wife, you set you pen down and both told while inquiring of Director Pierce, “Would it be ok, if I go grab a Gatorade from the breakroom for…”

“Of course, of course,” Alexander Pierce nodded, turning to go into his office. “Take a few minutes. On your way back, grab those files from Captain Rogers office. I’ll be in mine. Bring your good pen too. I have more notes to dictate once you dig up those numbers I need from the European Offices.”

***

It was like some sort of conditioned response.

Whenever Steve returned from a mission, wearing that suit, with that damn mask covering half his face and that hostile look in his eyes, as if he wanted to burn the world down…your body just reacted.

It was wrong.

It was so wrong.

You knew it was wrong.

Getting turned on by his aggression, the smell of gunpowder and the feel of his uniform hard against you. It was so wrong. It was always fast. It was so rough. No matter what, no matter where, it never lasted longer than a minute or two.

However, it had become something of a tradition. A routine.

Heels clicking soundly on the floor, handbag over your wrist, you swished your way down to the little breakroom. Feeling yourself get wetter and wetter and wetter with every step. Excitement bloomed in your chest. Giddy, you were shockingly very near giddy.

True to your word, you went in the empty kitchenette to the fridge. You procured a bottle of that blue stuff.

Upon hearing his boots softly, soundly, make contact with the hard floor surface made your throat clench, your mouth went dry. Quickly you set the bottle down on the breakroom table.

Immediately, your fingers went to the side fastener on your pencil skirt and then zipper.

Almost desperately, you worked to get them unfastened as the footsteps drew nearer.

Today though, today you were even more needy, more desperate. You needed it more than ever. You needed that release. You needed to feel good. You needed his body to satisfy that urge, to make you unwind, to help you relax and make your life bearable. Because he was one of the few things that made your life ok now.

By the time Steve got into the breakroom, your skirt had been shimmied down to your knees. Your lacy black underwear was on its way down.

Your eyes darted up. Seeing the fire in his as he shut the door softly, you knew he was going to be hard as a rock in his suit. His gaze hardened at the sight of you. 

Without a word, with that mask still over his mouth and nose, with his shield still strapped to his back, Steve set down the big dangerous looking gun onto the table. Hurriedly he unzipped himself. Your eyes watched him fight with the layers beneath his suit, as he crossed the room and pushed you up against the wall. Pinning you in, over in the far corner of the kitchenette.

Your voice was frantic as you whispered. “Please, give it to me. I need it. Don’t hold back. Hard Steve. Make it all ok again.”

If there was any control left in him, it was gone with your words.

One leg clad in the rough fabric of his suit sided against your thigh, pushed it forward, spread you open so he could brush his tip against your folds. Steve wasn’t surprised to find you wet. Dripping wet. Your arousal might as well have burnt him. Behind his hard mask, he hissed. 

You were so wet, so aroused, so hungry. A loud exhale of a cry escaped from you, when he slid in deep, all at once. Filling you so fully and perfectly you could have wept. Any discomfort you felt at the initial invasion of something so big, so thick, powering into you, was welcome because it was now familiar. Your body belonged to Steve. You’d had him so many times, how he felt was seared into your brain. How he felt was a memory your vaginal muscles had intimately memorized. That initial pain and burn as you stretched, was Steve.

A thickly gloved hand fell over your mouth, silencing you.

If anything, it just aroused you more. Awakening a taboo side of you. A side that Steve constantly seemed to poke at mercilessly.

Steve powered into you after that first thrust. His brain completely devolving into a frenzy of your soft, wet, tight, little body. Being at work, fully dressed, full of hellfire and vinegar, fucking you was all he could think about and he did. Viciously, he pounded into you from behind. Hooking your thigh up over his so he could push you against the wall, get in as deep as he could, a place of refuge in this hell. His body confined by his suit, so he was unable to feel you. You were just a warm soft bump between him and the wall, a taunt, something else being withheld. Minus that utterly exquisite wet heat between your thighs, the one that he sank in. It drove him to the brink. His words not being articulate from behind his mask. All he could do was grunt and moan like a beast.

Not daring to touch your clothes for fear he’d rip them, he threw his pelvis into you even harder in frustration.

He wasn’t going to last.

Behind the thick padded palm of his glove, your eyes rolled. Shit this was exactly what you needed to feel. If you were able, you would have told him just that fact. Although, it was a good thing he had his hand over your mouth. You would have been loud. He was being so rough. It felt so outstanding. Every drag through your core with that heavy thick veined shaft of his, so hard and powerful and deep, lit you up like a Christmas tree. 

Every thrust in, would nail your cervix, resulting in a shriek. Every withdraw, would result in a moan or gasp at the sensation, as your body was pushed higher and higher. Rough gloved fingers toyed with your clit, pushed your frothy arousal mixed with his pre-cum around the little nub.

The first time you came, you screamed behind his palm as your body shook. Steve just kept at it, chasing his own release. Every grunt from him, every tightening of his hand over your mouth, made it that much more erotic. It was turning you on far too much.

When you came once more, it was with him. 

You came jammed between him and the wall. Your body shoved up into it ruthlessly, as he humped into you like some kind of animal. Grunting roughly in release, his fingers angrily manipulating your clit so you would fracture again. Behind his hand you cried out, your eyes rolled into your head and your hands grabbed onto whatever parts of his suit that you could, in your excruciating pleasure.

For a few moments after, as his chest rested against yours and his bulk pinned you to the wall, his hips continued thrusting into you, as if they had a mind of their own. Grunts of surprised mixed with moans of pleasure came from your mouth, behind his hand, as he worked out whatever was left in him.

Because God, did you make him feel like a human being.

Steve tried to speak, attempted to do so.

That fucking mask muffled everything and with great resignation, he pulled his hand from between your legs so he could unstrap the damn thing. Upon doing so, he tossed it aside. Soundly, it landed by the energy drink as he slowly pulled his hand from your mouth and let himself slide from your body. With far more expediency, he reached down to pull up your panties and skirt as you yourself panted, gasped, regained control of your faculties.

Your heart pounded and your body was burning and you just stood there, for a moment, as your lacy undergarment was tugged up into place. As your skirt slid over the curve of your ass and Steve quickly zipped it in place, but did not bother to even attempt with the little latch while still wearing his gloves.

Far less carefully, he shoved himself back into his suit, mostly erect but feeling considerably better.

“What’s wrong?”

Unable to feel all ten of your toes, you took a few seconds to collect yourself. Only after a few more, you turned and fell back against the wall, looking over Steve as he adjusted himself, his suit.

You watched him pull a hand free of his glove. “Pierce…he hinted at kids…again. Plus he’s talking…” you grew quiet when Steve reached out for you, with his bare hand. At first, you were bewildered, until his thumb touched your mouth and you realized he was fixing your lipstick. His face was a mix of anger fused with hostility, sprinkled with general hatred. Yet, his hand was so gentle. “…about Peter. He wants him here. In this office…too.”

***

Alexander Pierce wasn’t stupid.

He knew what Captain Rogers and his secretary were doing.

It was what they did whenever Captain Hydra got back from a mission and after following the pair on several occasions, he’d figured it out. 

Not that he cared, oh no.

Not only did his superiors want Captain Rogers to impregnate his young wife, as soon as possible, hence the reason they’d found one so young. But, you were the best freaking secretary he’d ever had, hands down, without a doubt. He was more than willing to turn a blind eye. Not only did you do all of your usual work, you did whatever he asked you to do without complaining, competently, and when you had questions, they were good questions.

Plus, you disconnected your phone which cut down on his inter-office calls. If any calls of importance came his way, they came in on his second phone. You rarely scheduled any appointments for him, to see anyone, without checking with him first. You knew how he liked his coffee throughout the day. When you ordered lunch, you could pinpoint what he wanted with shocking success.

He’d had the building open up a daycare downstairs for your future children, because he had no plans to let you quit, upon starting your family with the Captain.

Which was exactly why he needed to speak with Captain Rogers.

He’d received a very alarming email, several actually.

They’d been something of a surprise

A surprise he planned to bring up to Captain Rogers. Who, at that moment, knocked on his office doorway, making him gesture. “Come in, come in Captain Rogers. Shut the door behind you, would you?”

Hydra’s new posterchild strolled in, freshly showered and wearing a clean stealth suit in the black and red, with that familiar octopus on his broad chest. 

Pierce pointed to one of the chairs in front of his desk and was pleased when the Captain took a seat without a word, without hesitation, obediently. His reeducation had been hard, brutal even. But so effective. A few times Pierce had been worried that Steve Rogers was not going to survive. In the end, those enhancements he possessed were something else.

“Everything go ok with the mission?”

“Yes sir,” was the confident answer he received.

The tall muscular former Avenger sat across from him, without any indication of what he’d just done at the resistance safehouse. Or what he had just done with his wife, probably in an empty office somewhere out among the Security Floor. Captain Rogers had the highest kill count on that mornings mission, as per his usual. Making him exceptionally pleased. Sending him on to his next topic for discussion. The fact that Steve Rogers was so sexually active was also a plus in his book. There was no problem with compatibility it seemed.

When Captain Rogers added nothing, Pierce pressed on, knowing that the man out of time was not one for chitchat.

“I received several emails from an anonymous account. IT was unable to find out from where, but they’re looking into it. Someone sent pictures to me. Pictures that lead me to believe your wife has been using birth control.”

Nothing. Silence. Not a word. Not a blink. Not even a twitch.

Not exactly the reaction Pierce was expecting.

“I believe you are aware, that Hydra has made it clear, to both you and your wife that safe sex is not a priority? In fact, she could face jail time for acquiring the contraband medication. Were you aware that she was using contraceptives?”

Now Steve had not been expecting this, however, he’d been expecting something related to the future generations comment. Therefore, he was prepared. He was able to keep calm. He was able to remain stoic. When all he wanted to do was snap Pierce’s neck and dig through the man’s emails.

Director Pierce lifted his eyebrows in anticipation of an answer.

“Yes,” was his answer, as if discussing the weather outside. “In fact, I was the one who insisted she take them. I acquired them. If anyone is to be reprimanded, it should be me.” Very satisfied with the surprise on his superiors face, Steve pressed on. “Director Pierce, I was not born the man you see before you. There is a very real chance that if I father a child, that child will take after me from before the serum. With Hydra’s use of eugenics when approving marriage certificates and at obstetrician offices, it is not a risk I want to take. If we were to have a child…I could not bear the loss to Hydra mandated euthanasia. It is for the best this way.” 

Every word from his mouth was both a lie and the truth.

In no way did Steve want to bring a child into this world. Steve did acquire birth control for you. Steve despised Hydra’s growing integration of eugenics that had started off slow, like a drop or two in a bucket and now, it just grew fuller and fuller.

He may have thought about it at night, while you slept beside him in bed and he was wide awake from the serum in his blood. He might have even rehearsed what he would say in this exact moment.

Blue eyes blinking, Alexander leaned back in his chair. He observed the super soldier before him closely, with new eyes even. Rocking back once, twice and a third time, he finally spoke. “I hadn’t realized that was such a concern for you, Captain.”

Steve was quiet.

Steve waited. Steve watched and anticipated, ready for whatever came next from Pierce’s mouth.

Something was about to come out. Pierce’s mouth opened and he looked to Steve. Sensing the need to speak up before that happened, Steve cut him off, “She is my wife? Correct? You gave her to me for my work as Captain Hydra? She is mine to do with as I want?”

Such words made Pierce pause, blink even.

There were times when he forgot that Captain Rogers was not of this time, this era. He supposed he should not have been surprised. Surely there would be a difference in the way that Captain Rogers saw his marriage. Heaven knew how traditional his home was, how he’d embraced the traditional marital roles. No, Pierce realized he should not have been at all surprised. “Yes, of course.”

“In that case,” Steve paused, adjusting in his seat, not looking away from the director. “When I decide that we’re ready to start a family, we’ll consult you about finding a specialist to ensure the right genes are passed on to my child. Until then, I have so much more I need to teach her about her role as my wife.”

***

Steve was not at all surprised, to see Peter by your side, when he stepped out of Pierce’s office and into his own, just across the hall.

“…and then stick that in with the after-action reports for this month…yep, in there…” you were explaining the filing system to a nodding Peter.

Perfect, just the person he wanted to see, along with the person he needed to see.

Quickly and quietly, Steve shut his office door.

Along one whole wall of his office, were filing cabinets. He’d been told on numerous occasions that they were in there so they were close to the director, should he need any of them. Steve wasn’t stupid. He knew it was just one more excuse for Pierce to come in his office.

And maybe he was a bit tightly wound.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he had to ask, “What does he have you doing today? Aren’t you supposed to be in school till two?”

Peter swallowed and glanced at you.

You handed him a file to file without a word, knowing he’d remember from last time where it went. 

Unable to keep your tone anywhere near civil, you seethed at Steve, the file smacking your younger brother square in his chest. “Director Pierce wanted Peter to sit in on the meeting this afternoon, for extra credit. So, he called the director of the academy yesterday to suggest it be a full day of interning. Therefore, Peter will be joining Alexander for lunch to meet all the department heads because apparently, he doesn’t have all his claws in my brother just yet.”

Steve sagged. Deflated really.

His broad shoulders fell as he took in that news. “Shit…” he swore at no one particularly. For just a moment, he looked up at the ceiling to collect his thoughts as Peter filed the folder you’d given him. Filing it in its correct location, in a middle cabinet in the near back of a heavy drawer.

It wasn’t like Steve was fond of your brother or anything.

No, that was ridiculous. Peter was just your younger brother. Nothing more.

So what if he’d pulled strings and on Peter’s first day of the Hydra Security Academy? What if he’d told the headmaster, that Recruit Parker, would be living at home and would be personally dropped off and picked up, by him, Captain Hydra, daily? He wanted to keep an eye on Peter, nothing more. Sticking him in the downstairs den, so he knew that the boy wouldn’t be sneaking out to do anything for Tony without him knowing? Well that was just good sense. Plus, who knew what the headmaster, or other students, would do to Peter? What if someone noticed that something wasn’t quite right about Peter? It was safer and better for everyone if Peter lived at home. That was it. His foot was down. His mind was made up.

It wasn’t like he’d developed any sort of affection for the young man. No. Not at all.

Setting his hands on his hips and looking back at you, Steve asked, “When do you go to lunch Peter?”

Already opening up a different drawer on the wall full of cabinets, your brother remarked. “Twenty minutes…I’m meeting Pierce by the elevators.”

“Can you do me a favor today?”

Immediately your eyes narrowed dangerously at your husband, at his request.

Ignoring you, Steve watched your brother closely as he filed that paperwork correctly too. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Can you, discreetly of course, without being caught, manage to get into Director Pierce’s email account and find emails that were sent to him, that he sent to IT? I want to know what’s in them and who sent them.”

Your glare turned murderous.

As if he’d simply asked Peter to go grab something out of his car, the young man nodded with ease. “Yeah, sure, no problem. I’ll do it after lunch. If I go out onto the roof and sit on a ledge with a building laptop, I can access the network and WIFI without ending up on camera.”

Which was the absolute last thing you wanted your baby brother to do.

So what if he could climb up the sides of buildings, and sit on a ledge a hundred stories up? He was your baby brother, you were supposed to look out for him. He was one of the last surviving members of your family and already you weren’t doing a good job at keeping him out of trouble.

***

Your phone was ringing incessantly when Steve happened upon your desk, after returning from downstairs, from a very unpleasant mission debriefing. 

He watched you lift up your receiver without looking up from your magazine, press a button to transfer the call without answering and then drop the phone back onto its plastic cradle. All while chewing on a pickle from what was left of your packed lunch.

“Pierce and Peter leave?”

People. You were reading People magazine.

“Ummhmm,” was your answer, you remained unmoving except to eat and read.

Typical, just so typical you.

He knew you were annoyed with him over asking Peter to go through Pierce’s emails and this just cemented it as fact. Was it his fault Peter had been picked by Hydra to go to the academy? No. Would he rather Peter have been up with your aunt in Queens? Absolutely. He only wished he had a say in that matter. If Peter was going to be made a member of Hydra, then Steve wanted to keep an eye out for him. He wasn’t trying to turn Peter into what you both despised. But if Peter was going to be made into one too, Steve was going to do everything to prepare him. If Peter was going to continue down the path of vigilantism, then Steve wanted to take part in that too. Their lives no longer belonged to them or had easy answers.

That you wouldn’t even look up at him. Oh how that just enraged him.

Knowing for a fact that if he asked you to join him for lunch, you’d turn him down. Not only would you turn him down, you probably wouldn’t even look him in the eye when you did it. You were infuriating like that.

“Come in my office. I need to dictate some things for you.” And then, he turned and strolled towards his office. Knowing if looks could have killed, his back would have been full of knives from your gaze.

Knowing exactly what he meant. Steve wanted privacy, for whatever it was you two were about to fight over and really, possibilities were endless.

Happy that you’d already eaten, you leaned down to grab your handbag. After shoving your planner and bottle of soda and magazine in, you flung it over your wrist then pranced, downright pranced, out from behind your desk and towards his office. Further setting Steve’s nerves on edge. His patience with you gone. That was it, there was no more for the day. The reserve had been met. Your quota filled. 

Following you into his office, not even the obvious sway of your hips lightened his temperament. If anything, it just pissed him off more.

No sooner had you tossed your handbag onto one of the two chairs in front of his old school desk, that very well could have been a Cold War relic in your honest to god opinion, did he start in on you. Clearly not wanting to waste a precious minute of his lunchbreak not fighting with you.

“Look! I’m not happy about this either! But we have to make the best of the situation we’re in and prepare him for his future!”

You threw your hands down in frustration. You stomped your foot.

Or else, you would have hit him.

After a year of being married, you’d discovered, it hurt you more than it hurt him when you hit him. Plus, it just infuriated Steve to no end, when you stomped your foot and waved your hands around.

“He needs to be prepared,” Steve ground out.

“He’s a child,” was your retort.

Which made him scowl, frown, lash out at you. “He is old enough to serve his country! He is a man and if something were to happen to either of us, he needs to know how to survive!”

Your hands clenched so tightly, you knew your nails drew blood in your palms. Your teeth clenched as you fought so hard to stay quiet, to not have a blowout that others would hear outside Steve’s office door.

“How do you plan on teaching him to be a man? Are you going to teach him the quickest, most effective way, to kill someone? Are you going to teach him how to spot someone following him? Are you going to teach him how to keep people he loves safe? Luck doesn’t last forever! How the two of you managed, to not get yourselves killed, is just beyond me!” Steve seethed at you, each word like a blow, making you shake and tremble with absolute rage. At him. At Hydra. At the position you were in. At the position Peter was in. Every single word out of his mouth was the truth. Obviously, you knew that Peter needed to learn all of those things. You also knew, you sure as hell couldn’t teach him to do any of them. And it killed you.

Gouging out his eyes would have just been so rewarding.

“Are you? You’re the one who put him in danger! Letting him do…” It was then that Steve grew quiet, stepped closer so only the two could hear him. Yet he didn’t grow any less vicious. “You know what you let him do, what you helped him engage in. You aided him in his sabotage! That’s far more dangerous! What if he’d been caught? What if you’d been caught? Did you ever think about that? It’s just the three of us now! We have to take care of each other! You two can’t go off half-cocked, relying on your good looks and charm anymore! We have to take care of each other!”

Like a leaf you shook. 

Your eyes were full of fire and try as he might, as much as he tried to keep a lid on it, it never worked with you. You could look at him and piss him off. Whatever was on the tip of your tongue was going to be scathing, caustic and very possibly quite loud. Steve put his hands on you. He grabbed your shoulders and shoved you down. Shoved you down to your knees. Before you could let loose with whatever venom was on the tip of your tongue, he forced you down till your knees rested on the hard, cold tiled floor. “We can’t do this here. Not now…someone could hear.” He snarled angrily at you, hissing at you like a snake. With so much pent up frustration and anger directed at you, as much as you directed at him, most definitely with the look you were giving him. Steve began to unzip himself. “That fucking mouth of yours! Drives me up the goddamn wall! It’s like you’re just trying to make me crazy!”

Hand on the Bible, you could say the same.

When you caught sight of his thick penis, your hands shot out and grabbed him, yanking him roughly from his Hydra Stealth Suit.

As much as you wanted to permanently maim him, he was right. You could not have this fight, in his office, in Hydra Security Headquarters. It just wasn’t smart.

There was, however, another way for you to fight with this enhanced man.

Yanking his half erect shaft from the confines of many layers of heavy fabric, cotton, lightweight body armor, he hissed. And then you put him in your mouth with nothing short of pure hostility and simmering aggression. Even soft, half soft anyway, he was still thick and more than filled your mouth and hands. 

Angrily you sucked on him, pumped him and yanked his balls out of all those layers, till they rested on his black suit.

Steve stumbled back against his desk. Overwhelmed. His head swam. A hand fell down on the top of your head. Profanities oozing with an accent from his home borough fell from his lips. Shit if it didn’t feel amazing. Like you were trying to suck his semen right from his sack. Your mouth was hot and wet and the way you licked and sucked and firmly pumped his shaft. Nothing was better.

Whatever you had to say to him must have been blistering. He was becoming hard as a fucking rock.

He had to fuck you.

Steve knew in that second, he had to fuck you again. It was just an obvious thing that came to mind. Like, he was going to need to get gas on the way home in his truck. He was going to have to change dry cleaners too. Peter’s khaki’s seam could have been far more inspiring.

“Take off your shirt,” he ordered, grabbing his shaft where your hands had been, as you listened for a change.

Your mouth never left his erection that you were looking so good on. 

It was almost painful watching you suck on his dick, like you were fighting with it in place of him.

Your fingers unhooked your little waist belt and then unbuttoned your top downright expediently. The second you tossed it up on the chair, Steve made another demand, “Take off your bra.”

A second or two passed before you followed his order.

When the silky black fabric slid down your arms, exposing your breasts, tightening your soft nipples, Steve groaned. His own hands tightened around the root of his dick. The next words out of his mouth were strained. Maliciously, you tilted your head and took him deeply into your mouth, then pulled out as you sucked deeply, secure in the knowledge that you were taking him apart with every passing second. It was your goal to bring him to his knees. 

“Play with your breasts.”

You did, your hands travelled over your breasts. Knowing how he felt about the gold bars in your nipples, you toyed with them until you moaned around his cock. 

A pained noise came from Steve. You got a taste of something warm and thicker than your saliva.

He was close.

Panting, your husband fisted himself, eyes gazing upwards as if for guidance. “Where do you want it? Your mouth? Pussy or ass?”

Still seething, you pulled off him while dragging your teeth, knowing just how stimulated he was, and popped off his angry red head. “I only get to pick one? Finally feeling your age, old man?”

You were not at all surprised when Steve’s grip on your hair tightened. When he pushed you down on his length, as far as you could take him and then, began to fist himself, his grip in your hair holding you in place.

“You’re gonna take every last drop doll…and then, I’m gonna fuck your cute little pussy when I take that ass,” he told you, in no uncertain terms. And god help you, you didn’t think you had ever been wetter in your life.

“Keep playin with those tits. Let me feel you moan.”

When he came, Steve warned you, always a gentleman, even when he was teaching you a lesson…kinda.

“I’m comin doll. You better take every last drop. Or I’m gonna fuck your tight little ass till you can’t see straight…”

When he came, he held you so snugly to his pelvis that all you could smell and taste was his cock, his musk, feel the soft dark blonde hair at his root. He was so far in, his crown pressed against the back of your throat and you swallowed a good bit of what he gave you.

Still though, when he looked down at you, face flushed, eyes a darker shade of blue, you couldn’t help yourself. You spat on the floor.

And it was not just that you’d done that, which was bad enough, defiant as ever.

It was the fact you looked him right in the eye as you did it. As if daring him to do something, to react. To punish you. To take you roughly on the desk, so you could feel something other than the constant fear and dread that seemed to incessantly plague you.

And did he.

Explosively, his temper crested. That hellfire in him that burnt so hot growing up as a scrawny Irish Catholic kid in Brooklyn, shone through. 

Easily taking your arm in his, he pulled you up to your feet so fast you would have stumbled if he hadn’t been holding you. You were pretty sure he broke the zipper on your skirt as he yanked it down over your hips, your panties too.

Unceremoniously, you were deposited up on the desk and before you could catch up, he was inside of you, buried deep. But he didn’t do more than that and you knew why. You could feel him stretch you out. You felt him hit your cervix and you were more than wet enough to take him.

Both your palms fell flat on the desk. Your breasts and stomach chilled by the cool surface. Steve took a few moments to soundly rail into you, warm you up as it were. Making you bounce up and down on the desk surface with every angry movement from him.

You waited.

You held you breath, knowing what was about to come, anticipating and steeling yourself. 

Before Steve, you’d done anal once and it hadn’t been fun. It’d been with the boyfriend who you loved so deeply in your youth, back when things were simpler and you had a future. You’d never ever thought you’d do it with Steve and that monster that swung between his legs. Nope. Nada. Never. Until, one time, he played with your second hole with some cum that had made the journey back there. And before you knew it, there was a finger and then two, he was scissoring you. Next time and half a bottle of lube later, it was in and he was fingering your vag and your clit like your life depended on it.

“So fuckin mouthy today. You wanna tell me why?”

You tensed when you felt him withdraw from your body, spread your ass cheeks with his hand. Your legs dangling over his immaculately neat desk, nowhere near the floor. You peeked back as he plopped his cock down in the valley between your plump cheeks. It made you jump, even as he rubbed your slippery arousal on your puckered hole.

It came out.

It just came out of you.

It felt so raw when he fucked you this way. You felt everything, every single fucking thing and you always felt so naked and vulnerable, so primed and exposed.

“I’m so scared…”

His thumb brushed over you, rubbed your own cum around your tight opening and began to massage it in, push his digit in, coat you in your own excretion. You arched back when his other hand sank into your core. A squelching noise came as your own juices squished out, were captured by Steve and rubbed on your ass.

“I’m so scared of everything going wrong. I’m scared of something bad happening. I’m scared you and Peter will get killed. I’m scared of being alone in all this mess…”

Another finger pushed into you, as you felt three fingers sink into your soaked cunt. 

When he pulled the two fingers from your second hole, you began to look back. Until you felt him push his tip against your ass and you couldn’t look. It burnt. Holy hell did it burn, it was beyond uncomfortable. Forcing you to have to focus all your attention on not fighting him, not tensing up and he wasn’t slowing down. He was pushing in as your eyes burnt with tears, as the discomfort bordered very close to pain. Gasping deeply, you spread your legs as wide as you could and tried to focus on the fingers rubbing your clit, pushing in and out of your other hole.

A high-pitched cry came from you as he bottomed out. You gasped and panted. His suit pushed up against your hose covered legs and bare ass, beneath your garter belt.

One of your heels clattered to the floor.

“Oh god…” you groaned, feeling so full, so uncomfortable. It was so alien and unfamiliar to have his shaft inside of your ass. As he stroked your clit just how you liked, as his fingers smoothed along your vaginal walls in a way that filled you to the point of unbearable, while stimulating every damn part of you.

When Steve began to pull out a little and push back in, you felt every single motion.

You didn’t last.

You orgasmed almost instantly like that, so full and aroused and everything just right. When you came, you were silent in your explosive pleasure, your hips bucked and your body trembled and it was only after that, did Steve start to really pound into your ass.

His fingers remained where they were, soaked in your cum and inside your walls, rubbing your clit just how you liked, as you were pinned down to his desk by his weight and member.

Steve was so mad and relentless and oh how he sympathized with you. 

He knew exactly how it felt to be helpless, terrified, out of control and everything unknown or unfamiliar, completely changed forever. 

He needed to come. He needed release. He needed to fill you so full of his cum, it leaked from you all day.

He didn’t last too much longer after you.

You were squeezing his cock so tight, it was almost unbearable. You were so wet, so so wet, he was going to rail into you some more after he came. He loved it when you got like this, drunk on what he did to you. And when he did climax, he pushed himself all the way into your ass, so you felt it all. Your hoarse gasp was a clue enough that you felt it. What felt like cloud after sticky cloud of cum came from him.

Leaning down enough to press soft little kisses along your spin. He told you quietly, “That’s not fear, doll, it’s your survival instinct. It keeps us alert and on our toes. We should always listen to that feeling.”

And then he did it again, exactly the same way, until your body shook and trembled and contorted in ecstasy beneath him. Until he couldn’t come again if he tried. But you came again, jammed beneath him and his desk. He made sure you came again. Until your body became so overwhelmed with your release, your legs no longer shook and your body no longer bucked against him. 

When you were the true definition of limp and he was positive that he’d distracted you for the time being.

***

Steve was not looking forward to this meeting.

Steve was going to be surrounded by every ranking Hydra officer, politician or director within the greater DC Maryland tristate area.

It was his personal idea of hell.

But wait, that wasn’t just it.

Oh no, there was more.

Peter would be there at Director Pierce’s side. Another knife in his back, courtesy of Hydra. What was one more? It seemed like Hydra was always finding new and inventive ways to make him suffer.

Without a word to anyone, he stepped into the large meeting room packed full of people. People talking and moving around. Nearby he could hear you arguing loudly with someone and Pierce trying to placate you.

Did it ever end?

Tables formed a horseshoe, facing a podium and floor to ceiling windows lining an entire length of a wall. Giving him quite an amazing view of DC and the Potomac. Also giving him quite the view of Peter, getting spoken to by several men he recognized as department heads.

Boy did he feel for the young man. He really did. If Peter didn’t manage to break free from them, he’d call him over. Steve wasn’t about to go over there and risk having to speak with any of those people. Not after his morning. Sure, bickering with you had been rewarding. But his afternoon was booked, and there was a chance you wouldn’t be up for any more of your wifely duties, not for the rest of the afternoon, minimum.

“…look lady, I’m just trying to do my job…”

“So am I! And I’m trying not to get blown up in the process! No boxes! What is so hard to understand? Take it down to the mailfloor! The FedEx guy should have left it down there!”

Greeting a few of the officials who wanted to talk with a nod, a polite few words, Steve expedited his way through the sea of his enemies, ever closer to the shrill sounds of you.

He could still hear the words you’d whispered to him. Lipstick smeared on your face, curled over the front of his desk, where he’d pounded out every last bit of frustration he had into your undressed body. Well, almost undressed, he’d left you in those garters and hose.

“ _I’m so scared…_ ”

It was like they had been seared into his brain.

You’d sounded so terrified when you’d whispered them.

“ _I’m so scared…_ ”

Of course you were scared. The two of you lived in terrifying times. It made sense that you were frightened. It shouldn’t have bothered him. It shouldn’t have twisted at him all afternoon. He was your husband, after all. Was what he reminded himself.

He was your husband on paper and nothing more, was the follow-up. Which just further irritated him.

At this point, he was going to drive himself crazy.

Your eyes met his in the conference room and again, your words made him straighten up.

“ _I’m so scared…_ ”

It was his duty as your husband to make sure you felt safe, nothing more.

Of course he was going to make sure he looked after Peter.

Peter was an ally, an asset, nothing more. And he would keep reminding himself of that for as long as he needed.

Seeing Director Pierce steer you away from the bicycle messenger and down towards the end of the table meant nothing. Director Pierce was old enough to be your father, maybe even your grandfather. It meant nothing. Nothing. Tightening his jaw, he followed you both.

“Why do we even have rules if no one follows them,” you demanded of your boss. Getting an eyeful of your husband again, for the first time since lunch. Afterwards, you’d gone down to the mailroom to sign for things requiring a signature. Then you spent a good amount of time down in records for the director.

“ _I’m so scared…_ ”

It had just slipped out.

You hadn’t meant to say it, to confess it, to admit weakness.

“ _I’m so scared…_ ”

You were terrified of Peter getting killed, or worse, captured. You were terrified of losing your Aunt May. You were terrified that you’d lose Steve and then, you were even more upset, when you made that realization.

Not a day went by anymore when you weren’t nervous, afraid, on edge or looking over your shoulder.

Finding yourself stripped down to practically nothing, pinned beneath his massive body against his desk, twitching, panting, mind blown with his cock buried in your ass. You’d felt so raw, so stripped down. 

Which was exactly how you found yourself, verbally vomiting all over his desk.

With every step, you could feel your lunchtime activities. You could feel your wet panties. When you sat down, you felt his cum drain from your ass. Several impromptu trips to the ladies room had already been made for cleanup purposes.

“ _I’m so scared…_ ”

Seeing Peter nervously talking with the highest-ranking Hydra officials in the building, like a knife in your heart. It took your breath away. Steve following you and Pierce, across the room, with what could only be described as ‘resting serial killer face’ was only slightly better.

Steve had been right.

You and him knew what you were doing, when he went out and did what he did. Helping out Phil and Maria and Tony had been risky, but, you were an adult and you had a plan in case you were caught.

Peter was so young, a baby. 

Next time you saw Tony, you were going to give that man a piece of your mind.

Distracted and irritated, volatile even in your state.

You never heard it. You never expected it. You never saw it coming.

Peter was first to notice it.

A click.

All the way across the room by the expansive wall of windows. He heard the soft click as if a gunshot went off in the room. Soft hairs rose on the back of his neck, on his arms, as he looked over at the box on the table by a deliveryman. 

In doing so, his eyes met Steve’s blue gaze.

Obviously, Steve had heard it too.

No one else noticed, no one else heard it.

A second click came, followed by what Peter could have sworn was a tsunami wave. 

Peter screamed your name. 

Steve yelled at Peter to get down.

You glanced up, bewildered, just as all the air was sucked out of the room before you could do a thing, think or form an opinion. Something that could have been a boulder hit your back, taking you down to the cold office floor painfully hard.

Heat and fire followed and then, blackness, nothingness.


	2. Part Two

Something fell on Steve.

It wasn’t anything particularly heavy. Nor was it something that was painful. It just distantly reminded him that he was no longer standing. It reminded him that something bad had happened as his brain fought viciously to catch up, fight through the noise and immediate responses and instincts for survival.

A piece of ceiling panel was what it was, he came to realize, from beneath a sea of debris.

Over the back of his head and the broad expanse of shoulders was his shield. His hand so tightly squeezing the grips inside of it, that his palms ached painfully. Amid sounds of the explosion, he could remember things hitting it with solid thuds against the metal. Within his suit was a protective layer of armor, still though, that didn’t mean he didn’t feel pieces of the office hitting him. It didn’t mean that he didn’t feel the table collapse on him, unable to withstand the explosive blast.

His ears rang. 

All he could smell was smoke and blood and explosives mingled together.

Oh the irony, considering how many bombs he’d built himself. Considering how many times he’d thought about blowing up one of these meetings.

Not with you and Peter in the room though, never.

Coughing from the thick black smoke billowing out, where a thick wall of glass once stood, Steve pushed his shield. Shrugging off the broken remains of the conference table, he found himself shoving Pierce’s limp body off you. He’d used the Director as something of a shield. Knowing that his suit and accelerated healing would allow him to survive any concussive injuries from the explosive device.

He knew Peter would be ok too.

Peter was more like him than you. Plus, he’d seen Peter get hit by a bus and limp away from it one night. 

Not that he wasn’t worried about Peter. 

Last he’d seen, before fire and smoke filled the room, Peter had gone through that glass in the blast. Which led him to shout for Peter, as he shoved Pierce aside roughly, uncaring. He’d hoped Pierce would take any sort of concussive injury that his shield and body didn’t protect you from.

“Peter…Peter…Peter!”

Parts of the ceiling continued to fall on the floor. Parts of the room were on fire. Steve was pretty sure that parts of the floor were crumbling too, as his hands very carefully rolled your limp body over. As he continued to shout for your brother, his voice getting louder and louder each time.

And Peter heard him.

Peter heard him, as he scurried up the side of the building, as quickly as he could, now that nothing else was falling down on him from the blast.

Tables. Parts of the building. Glass, so much glass.

Heat, the building burnt his hands but he managed to stay on, as he climbed higher and higher, ever closer towards the massive gaping hole that black smoke billowed out of. 

He had to be extra careful the closer he got to the hole.

Not only was the glass fragile and the building around no longer structurally sound, but it was hot. He found himself softly swearing, as he hurled himself into the blackened room. Nearly throwing himself in what remained of a Hydra Member, parts of him anyway.

Only the sound of Steve’s voice kept him from letting out a shout at the gore. 

“I’m here! I’m here,” Peter shouted, his own ears ringing so loudly that he had to yell just to hear his own voice. Which led him to believe that Steve was also shouting.

All he could taste was blood. His clothes were singed and covered with glass, debris and where his skin didn’t burn from the heat, he could feel cuts everywhere. Blood made his hands slippery and he was missing his shoes. He’d managed to catch himself on the side of the building before he’d fallen too many floors.

It hurt to breathe. The smoke burnt his lungs and every instinct in him screamed to get the hell out.

Not one person remained standing and all Peter could see was black. Black rubble. Black walls. Black flooring. Pieces of people that had been standing were black. His feet carried him over to where he remembered seeing you and Steve and Pierce, before he heard the telltale sounds of a bomb arming.

Heart pounding so hard in his chest he swore he could hear it. Peter climbed over what was left of a table when he saw the blackened red octopus on Steve’s shield. “Steve! Steve!”

Movement.

Even though his ears were still ringing something spectacular, Peter made out movement as he saw Steve stand. Suit blackened and smoking towards the legs, face sooty from smoke and your limp body in his arms.

“Oh my god,” Peter cried out a second later as absolute panic seized him.

The room dropped at least thirty degrees, as his worst fear materialized right in front of his very eyes.

“She’s ok…she’s alive, she’s breathing.” Steve told your brother, handing you over, passing you to safety and Peter quickly grabbed you. Your weight nothing for him with his enhanced abilities. Peter took you and held you close, his eyes burned wetly as he pressed his palm on your side. A shuddering sigh of relief came from him, when he felt your ribs move from the intake and exhalation of your lungs. A sob escaped him purely from relief.

You smelled like smoke and blood but you were alive.

Peter found himself muttering in thanks at no one particular, just as Steve threw something onto the floor that landed soundly at Peter’s feet. Surprising Peter, naturally. He glanced down to see a singed and unmoving Alexander Pierce as his still smoldering brother-in-law stood, placed his shield on his arm and climbed over the rubble of the table.

“Is he…?”

“No,” was Steve’s answer.

Alexander Pierce was alive, somehow.

Not that Peter particularly cared about him. His eyes went up at sounds of the ceiling moving, shifting. The ringing in his ears was still there…just not as loud. Loud enough for him to hear, but not loud enough for him not to hear the damaged ceiling above. “Steve…we have to go…”

Goosebumps rose on his arms as he could feel soft pieces of ceiling come down, sprinkle really.

And then the larger man was on his feet, by Peter.

Something above both men moved.

Peter moved, or tried to, attempted to drop down to his knees to cover you as best as he could with his shoulder. Steve grabbed him. Muscle layered upon muscle wrapped around his slimmer shoulders, pulled him close and pulled his shield over the both of them, until Peter found his face shoved against the rough smoky fabric of Steve’s suit.

Loud metal noises and broken glass banged on Steve’s shield, rained down around them as more of the ceiling fell.

Peter clung to your limp body tightly as Steve held him. Steve clung to him tightly, feeling painful hits on his back as pieces of ceiling hit him. But he did not care. Not one bit. Peter was protected beneath his shield and you were between him and Peter. And it was fine. He could deal with the bruises in his muscle, on his ribs and flesh. All of that would heal. If something happened to Peter, that he’d never get over. He now totally understood how Bucky felt, when they were growing up and adolescents on the cusp of adulthood, running around Brooklyn and beyond their borough and he was always getting himself in trouble, in fights, sick.

But he couldn’t think about Bucky.

He couldn’t go there, not at that exact moment. He was already in hell. There was no need to make things worse.

Twice he’d lost Bucky.

Twice he’d been unable to save that other part of him. Because calling him a friend, well, that just didn’t quite cover it.

One day Hydra wouldn’t be able to keep Bucky from him any longer.

He just had to survive and keep what he’d managed to create alive. He just had to stay alive. That had been what he’d held onto during his reeducation. If he stayed alive, he could find Bucky one day. If he could stay alive, he could keep you and Peter alive. If he could just stay alive.

***

You came to suddenly. Dramatically. Somewhat painfully.

Gasping. Jerking. Flailing even.

“Holy shit!”

Was that your brother Peter?

You were coughing. Painful coughing that led you to throw up. You got sick in a pair of powerful slim arms. Arms that quickly set you down on a cool cement floor as sounds of people running, crying, yelling and screaming distantly registered. You were a bit busy emptying the contents of stomach.

You weren’t dead. Of that you were certain.

You were in too much pain to be dead.

Your head pounded like it had never pounded before. You were dizzy and managed to lose your balance from where you sat on your hip, with both hands on the concrete, as you retched up everything you’d eaten that day. Thus making your head pound even worse.

“Oh god…oh god…oh god…” cried your brother, holding you upright beneath your arms.

You couldn’t think. You could barely concentrate on one thing. You wanted to tell Peter you were ok. You wanted to ask if he was ok. You wanted to ask what had happened. You wanted to ask where Steve was. All you could do was shudder, your body screaming at you in protest at what had happened.

Bigger hands cupped your face as you finished up, as your final retches came out until your body dry heaved, as your head pounded even more. Your heart angrily making itself known in your temples.

“Why’s she throwing up? Steve? What’s wrong with her? Steve? Steve?”

Those hands cupped your face, tilted your gaze up till you saw black and blue.

Steve’s face was smeared with ash and you could just make out smudges of his pale flesh here and there, but there was no hiding the blue of his eyes. Those eyes bore into yours intently. So intently you were unable to concentrate on his stare…unless there was another reason you were unable? It felt like your brain had been put in a blender. You were so discombobulated. Which you tried to tell Steve, tried to explain, detail.

“She’s concussed…she needs to go to the hospital with Pierce…”

Well that didn’t sound good.

You didn’t remember getting concussed. Was that because you were concussed? And what was wrong with Pierce?

Oh god your head though.

You could barely think or see straight…how many Steve’s were there? And when you opened your mouth to speak, your words were slurred, your tongue didn’t quite work right.

“Oh shit! Oh shit…” came from Peter. Hands in his hair in a full-on panic as you slurred, moaned really. 

It was Steve’s commanding voice that pulled him from his storm of panic. 

“Peter. She is ok. She has a concussion. She might have a broken ankle. But she will be ok. You’re going to the hospital with her and you will stay there, by her side, until I can get there. Ok?”

Steve’s grip on your face remained firm, tight, holding you steady as he looked into your eyes closely. You weren’t entirely sure what he was looking for but he was looking for something. 

And that was the last thought you had for a while.

***

When you opened your eyes again, it was with a jerk, a gasp.

You were somewhere new.

You were somewhere you didn’t recognize.

Your head felt like it was splitting open and a whole new wave of nausea totally hit you, making you wince against bright lights and…a rough hand grabbed your own. A hand that felt like it was covered in sandpaper.

Peter.

“Hey…you’re up…”

Slowly, very slowly, you turned your head to look at your brother as you felt him get up, move closer to you.

Seeing your brother though, that was a relief. A relief to end all reliefs.

Even if he was absolutely filthy.

“You’re in the hospital with a concussion and a broken ankle,” he softly told you, holding your hand and giving you a watery smile. One that just broke your heart right open. “The doctors did a CatScan and there’re no fractures in your head. There isn’t any bleeding either. Steve’s gonna come as soon as he can get away. Ok? But I’ll be here…I’ll stay right here. You’re safe. I won’t leave your side.”

Peter promised you, swore it.

His grip on your hand grew stronger as he felt your hand loosen, loosen again and he watched your lids grow heavy as your body sagged and once more, you fell under.

You’d been restless.

Several times since being admitted you’d woken up for quick intervals, barely enough for him to get a word or two in, before you fell back under from the swelling, the concussion. 

Being the wife of Captain Hydra himself, meant, you got the best medical treatment available. Doctors were coming in and out of your room every fifteen minutes it seemed. Peter had actually timed it.

Several times they told him that he could go home to change. Several times they assured him that you’d be fine, that they’d have someone sit by your bedside.

Peter refused.

Peter would remain by your side until Steve arrived. There was a private bathroom in your hospital room. Peter wasn’t going anywhere until you were discharged.

When you were once again out of it, he let go of your hand. Gently he tugged the blanket back up to cover your hospital gown. He pushed hair from your face and then sat back down, in the chair he’d pulled beside your hospital bed.

Even though you were hooked up to numerous machines, his senses allowed him to hear the steady beating of your heart. Every strong inhale and exhale of your lungs.

Steve’s voice droned on from the TV on a replaying news cycle.

Captain Hydra had given a statement on behalf of Hydra. Leading Peter to assume everyone else who normally would have clambered in front of the TV Cameras, had to have been dead. It was only when he arrived at the hospital that seemed to be oozing with patients, that he learned there had been several simultaneous bombings at the Triskelion.

Settling into the uncomfortable chair by your bed, Peter sat in the same spot, unmoving, for hours. He listened to you rest. He listened to the machines you were hooked up to beep. He watched the doctors and nurses that came in to check on you like a hawk, each time. He listened to and watched Steve, whenever that particular news segment came on, a repeat, but it was aired again and again. Steve promising that Hydra would find the culprits behind the bombings. 

Peter didn’t particularly care about that, no. 

Peter watched to see if Steve was sending him any hidden messages. Would he? Or would he not even dare? 

Such thoughts were going through his head, when fine hair on his crossed arms rose.

His gut twisted.

A tingly feeling filled him.

Peter literally watched the hairs on his wrists rise and slowly, quietly, he slipped onto his Croc clad feet, thanks to someone in the hospital and he rose.

Someone was outside the door, lifting your chart from the plastic holder as quietly as they could. For Peter, they might as well have been kicking the door while they did so.

Although, it was not that, that made him rise.

Several people had grabbed your chart, made notes, looked it over while talking with someone, slammed it back down. That was hardly shattering. What got Peter’s attention was the smell. A few hours had passed allowing his senses to calm, to level out, normalize back to his baseline.

Head and Shoulders shampoo. Cucumber and Melon hand sanitizer. Spearmint gum. Body sweat that his deodorant couldn’t control. 

The man he caught going through your desk.

That man was now looking at your hospital chart?

Peter wasn’t about it. Nope. No way.

He walked right over to the door to your private room. A perk of being Mrs Hydra it seemed. Wearing a pair of midnight blue scrubs from the ER. His hair was a mess, but, he’d washed his hands and face and neck. Not taking the time to shower in the bathroom yet, because he didn’t want to close the door and not keep an eye on you. Whenever Steve was able to come to the hospital. Then he would shower. Until then, he’d just smell like smoke and keep picking pieces of blackened glass from his hair.

When Peter yanked open the door to your room, the man dropped your chart.

Easily, without having to look away from the man, Peter caught it.

Gaping, the man in the bad fitting suit stepped back.

Peter grabbed his wrinkled shirt and yanked him forward. “Who are you!”

Outside your room, the halls were hectic, chaotic even. No one seemed to notice Peter or the man of equal height. Not even as he found himself rising onto his toes, being lifted up by the fabric of his shirt by a young male half his size.

Eyes widening and hands grabbing Peter’s, he cried out, “Hydra, I work with you!”

Slowly, methodically, Peter shook his head. His eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who sent pictures to Director Pierce of my sister. You’ve been spying on her, and Steve. You took those pictures of her taking her birth control pills in the morning, and the pictures of them in bed together. You’re disgusting! What is wrong with you!”

The man attempted to pull away, get out of Peter’s grip.

He was quite surprised to find that no matter how hard he pulled, not only did Peter’s grip not loosen, the young man who couldn’t be old enough to drink didn’t budge, move or even shift. Peter stood there like a statue.

“Why’d you send them to Director Pierce? Who told you to do that? Why are you even here? Are you stalking my sister?”

Once more the man struggled desperately to get out of Peter’s grip.

In the end, he didn’t get free on his own and Peter didn’t let go of him. A stretcher getting pushed hurriedly by hit the man on his side, knocked him against the wall hard enough, his shirt tore. Ripped fabric remained in Peter’s hand, as the man took off running down the hall.

For a second, Peter was going to give chase.

Easily he’d be able to get to the man, drag him off, question him.

But, that would mean leaving you and Peter wasn’t about to leave you. 

***

Sometime around sunrise was when Steve managed to yank on some clean clothes.

He had yet to shower.

He had yet to eat or drink.

He’d managed to get up to his office after the building had been cleared by the fire department, but not the structural engineers. Not that Steve was too concerned. Steve had done his job as Captain Hydra. He’d helped make sure the entire building was evacuated. He called in bomb technicians to gather up what they could, to find out everything possible about the five bombs that had been detonated in the crown jewel of Hydra’s political empire, the Triskelion.

Hydra’s world leaders had been briefed by him personally, via video conference, on what had happened and then he’d given a statement to the press.

Steve’d gotten everything through to the morning.

His work was done.

Which found him to changing in his office. Untouched by the blast but reeking of smoke, like everyplace else in the steel and glass building.

Mind set on one goal, he stripped out of his ruined suit and into the khakis and button-up he kept in a bottom drawer of his desk. After shrugging on the burgundy shirt and buttoning it mostly up, he pulled up the tan slacks.

A female voice cleared her throat from his doorway.

There’d been so many people walking back and forth with boxes full of what was left of the bomb, he hadn’t thought twice when he heard someone around his office door. He didn’t even slowdown in his zipping or fastening of his fly. “I’m heading out in a second ma’am. I just wanted to change.”

Sharon Carter’s voice filled his office.

“Captain Rogers, you’re needed in the downstairs conference room, to brief the heads of Hydra around the world this morning.”

After his reeducation, Steve pretended that he didn’t remember Agent Carter. It was easier than trying to figure out if he could trust her or not. So far, he hadn’t come across her during his encounters with the resistance members he’d met. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t against Hydra, it didn’t mean she was for Hydra. He just hadn’t been able to trust anyone right after and now, he’d been pretending so long, it was just easier. Now he didn’t want to risk you or Peter. He knew you and Peter wouldn’t turn him in for sedition. You and Peter were more than enough.

So as he adjusted himself and fidgeted with his dress shirt, he curtly replied with a rousing. “Whoever is assuming Pierce’s role is responsible for that Agent Carter. I need to go see my wife. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Captain Rogers?”

To which, Steve did look up, recognizing her shocked tone. It took a considerable amount of effort to tell the attractive blonde woman, in a level tone, “Whoever is in charge is responsible for that now. Until Director Pierce wakes up from his coma. I really need to go check up on my family.”

Peggy’s niece blinked at him.

She frowned and then told him, incredulously, “It’s you.”

Her words caught Steve off guard. With a shake of his head, he grabbed his wallet and keys from where he’d tossed them on his desk. His stealth suit ruined. He’d have to grab one from his locker to change into when he got back. “It’s me what?”

“Steve!”

She said it in much the same way Peggy did and it made him pause and look at her, really look at her.

“Steve, you’re in charge. Everyone is dead. There is no one left. You’re our acting Director of Hydra here in America, until Pierce either recovers…or…” Her silence indicating that she honestly did not know. This had never happened.

Not sure, not totally believing it, Steve shook his head. “No…it’s gotta be someone else. What about Max?”

“Dead,” Sharon answered.

“Juanita?”

“Dead,” Sharon answered.

“William?”

“Dead.”

“What about Linus?”

“He’s dead too. They’re all dead Steve. Everyone is dead. Our only senior members with your security clearance are you, Diane and Harris. Diane is in the hospital in critical condition and Harris is currently being investigated for subversion.”

Not for the first time in twenty-four hours, Steve’s ears began to ring. He felt himself grow hot from shock and disbelief, his world seemed to shrink down to a pinpoint as all the air was sucked from the room.

Sharon said something. Her mouth was moving.

Steve never heard it though.

Fireworks could have been going off in his office and he wouldn’t have noticed a thing. He didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t true. He could not be responsible for holding together Hydra. He couldn’t be the one tasked with holding together the very thing he was trying his damned hardest to rip apart from the inside. It could not be true. The world could not be that cruel.

When he was finally able and the words finally came to him. He managed to get out, “I need to see my wife.”

Sharon procured a cell phone from somewhere on her person. “I’ll have a team get her. What hospital is she at?”

“You really don’t need to.”

“Nope, I insist,” was her response. Thumb softly tapping on the screen of her phone. “We can’t have you leaving the building yet. Plus, it would be better for all parties involved, if we kept an eye on your wife while you’re fulfilling Director Pierce’s duties today.

Another few taps of her thumb and she was flipping through her contact list.

“Dammit Sharon.”

Confused, Agent Carter glanced up, just in time to see a glint of something metal, something red and black, and then, darkness. 

A scowl on his face, Steve watched the woman crumble onto the floor. His bloody shield sank into the office wall. 

“I really wish you didn’t insist.”

***

A few days passed before you were let out of the hospital.

A few more passed until you were able to hobble your way down to the Triskelion. Well, hobble under the watchful eye of Mariko and Lynette from the neighborhood, who took turns hanging out with you during the day, now that you were married to the acting Director of Hydra for North America. Which you still could not really believe.

And you had been the one to help convince Steve to do it.

Not so much for obvious reasons. More like, self-preservation for all of you.

_Is this the type of thing that you can say no to?_ Had been what you asked him from your hospital bed while Peter paced, hands in his filthy hair, simply unable to believe it.

You hadn’t been able to wrap your head around what he’d told you much better. But, at least, you’d been able to understand that the situation was obviously out of his hands and he wasn’t asking you what he should do, it was more like he needed to hear that it would be ok. You could remember his face still. Even with your concussion, you could remember how torn he looked, how horrified and disgusted.

A few days had passed until he no longer had that look on his face.

You of all people knew what a nightmare this was for him, which was why, you’d elected to come down to see him and Peter. 

It wasn’t your first time back to the building since the bombing. But, it was the first time you came back on your own, not having to get all dressed up as Captain Hydra’s wife for a show of solidarity for cameras.

Work was already being done on the outside of the building you noticed, when the three of you arrived in Lynette’s Mini Cooper. A big black SUV type vehicle had followed you from the neighborhood, all the way to the Triskelion. It was kinda hard not to notice.

You weren’t at all shocked, when Peter was waiting for you at the elevator doors.

“You should have told me you were coming,” he scolded, as you made your way off the elevator on crutches, handing him your hefty handbag. “I could have had a car come pick you up. You really shouldn’t be shoving yourself in the backseat of Lynette’s mini cooper. If you get in an accident, you could hurt your foot and have to keep the lime green wonder on even longer.”

On your foot, supporting your broken ankle, was the most godawful, ugly, bright lime green cast you’d ever seen.

It was most spectacularly ugly.

Peter told you that there was an even uglier neon orange, plus florescent pink, as well as a dark midnight blue. And now, that you were feeling better, you wondered how on earth you had been allowed to pick the color of your cast? When you were so severely concussed?

Both Steve and Peter had hid the tools from you, after finding you on the garage floor with a hacksaw.

You weren’t planning on cutting off your foot. All you wanted was the blue cast. Was that too much to ask?

A noise came from you, as your crutched your way from the elevators and towards the Security offices. “Please…Lynette is the safest driver I know. She follows all traffic laws and stays three under the speed limit ever since she got her license taken away.”

From behind you, Peter rolled his eyes.

He followed you as you hobbled your way ever closer to the Directors office.

For the first few days of the crutches, you’d had a few near disastrous falls that he’d luckily been there to catch, Steve too. You’d gotten pretty good at using your crutches as grabbers though, if Peter was being perfectly honest.

“Yeah well…that is supposed to keep Lynette off the road…” was Peter’s muttered response. “And why didn’t Mariko drive?”

Along you crutched, your big ugly cast swaying back and forth dangerously, in Peter’s honest opinion.

A loud, annoyed noise, came from you as Director Pierce’s office, now Director Rogers’s Office according to the new name plaque, came into view. “Come on Peter! You know Mariko won’t let anyone in her car. Ever since she got pulled over and Lynette got caught with that small canon she calls a handgun in her purse.”

To which, Peter quieted down while pressing his lips in a thin firm line. 

He reached out to steady you when you swayed a bit on the crutches, or maybe it was your pump, which really was not appropriate footwear on crutches. Even the doctor had told you so.

No sooner had he stepped out from behind you, to open the door to the Director’s Office, did it open.

And there stood Steve, in grey slacks with a black button up shirt and matching grey vest. And boy did he look just good enough to snack on. Not that you were thirsty or anything. Oh no. You were a grown ass woman who nearly died. You’d gotten blown up, had a concussion serious enough to leave you in the hospital for days. Your ankle was broken and it’d been a weekish since you’d last had any below the belt action.

The resistance was so getting an earful.

It was one thing to blow you up, but now they were impacting your sex life. And that was uncalled for.

“You better not have gotten in a moving vehicle with Lynette again.”

Pausing on your crutches, uncaring of who was around, cleanup crew or staff, your mouth opened in protest. Till Peter quick grabbed you beneath your shoulders and walked you into the office.

“Come on you guys, none of that, not around the office, not anymore.”

As if you weighed nothing at all. Your little brother carried you into your husbands new, spacious office, underneath your arm pits, like some kind of misbehaving toddler. All you could do was hang onto your crutches and scowl down at him in protest.

It wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t fair at all.

Steve moved expediently, after shutting his office door and had the two chairs in front of his desk moved along side of it. So you could sit nearer to him with your cast up on the second chair.

You found yourself swatting at the two of them irritably, when they plopped you down in the chair and lifted up your full plaster boot. Exposing only your painted toenails and hitting you just below your knee. Your shaving situation would be dire in six weeks.

“Oh…Colonel Karpov called again but the call got disconnected. Wherever he is must be either far away, or have some really thick metal walls…”

At mention of the unfamiliar name that kept calling, Steve frowned. Your casted ankle in his hands. “Again? Huh…just put him through next time. I’ve been going through Pierce’s desk and can’t find anything at all with his name on it.”

And as if on cue, the phone out on your former desk began to ring.

Peter pressed his lips against the top of your head, before hurrying off. Soundly shutting Steve’s office door behind him in his haste.

Still a bit salty about being manhandled, you fluffed your burgundy and tan polka dot dress over your knee. “How’s it going Director Rogers,” you huffed.

Steve gave you a look, before placing your cast down on the spare chair.

“It goes…it’d go even better if I could figure out why that man keeps calling. But otherwise…it’s been a productive day. No word about a replacement for me unfortunately. Pierce is still in his coma. Tonight, the tac team is going out to raid a warehouse suspected to belong to the resistance.”

A noise came from you that could have meant anything.

You weren’t at all happy to hear that Pierce was still in his coma. Nor were you particularly thrilled, to hear there was no word about a more permanent replacement. Shifting in the chairs, you were able to offer some helpful information for your dearly beloved. “All of Pierce’s work stuff for the colonel should be in that hidey spot in his desk.”

“What?”

You glanced up from your fluffing to see a perplexed look on Steve’s handsome, clean shaven face.

Over on his desk was his tie, his grey jacket hung over his chair.

Gesturing, you pointed to the top of your former boss’s desk. Of course Steve wouldn’t know. You knew because you’d been around enough to see Pierce get in there. Usually when on the phone with the Hydra Colonel. “Lift up the desktop planner. It’s a compression latch. You should be able to see the hidden panel with your super soldier eyes. Or just take the letter opened and feel around for it.”

Pierce had never openly talked with the man on his second phone around you. But he never shoved you out of his office, or told you never to mention the name or his secret hidey spot in his desk. Not that he had to. That was just the sort of thing that didn’t have to be said in your opinion.

“There should be some paperwork in there…a little red notebook with a star and some other stuff. I think I saw some dogtags in there too one day…” you remarked. And Steve went, pleasing you. Steve never wrote you off for being just a secretary. Steve always listened to you, even when you spouted things he didn’t want to hear.

Even with your broken ankle, you felt useful and watched Steve go to the desk and lift up the mentioned desktop planner in his search.

It totally wasn’t a wasted trip.

***

“Why can’t I come too? You shouldn’t go alone. Especially not now Steve. And, if you insist upon going tonight, Director Rogers, you should take Peter. You need a lookout.”

You didn’t like this. Not one bit. And you couldn’t even argue effectively in your state, wearing a fuzzy bathrobe and seated up on the master bathroom counter. Booted foot up. Arms crossed. Lips in a pout.

It was no good, in your opinion. No damn good. It was way too soon after the bombing.

It was too soon after Steve found those dog-tags and thumbed through that battered red book. The one with the black star on the front that made him tremble.

Usually, Steve spent weeks planning, at minimum.

He may have had several different things in the works. However, Steve was a meticulous planner and this, this felt so un-Steve-like to you.

When he came home, he and Peter spoke quietly in a tone only the two of them could hear. And just based on Peter’s grim expression, you knew fuckery was afoot. Something was going on and here you were, stuck at home with a broken foot. It was ridiculous.

The fact that Steve didn’t give you an answer didn’t sit well either.

You knew he heard you. With his hearing, he had to of heard you as he taped a plastic trash bag around the plaster cast on your foot.

“Steve…”

Only after he secured the plastic bag around your knee with a godawful amount of tape, did he straighten up and look at you. 

Your mouth opened.

He put down the packing tape on the counter near where you were seated. He had that look on his face. He was stuck in his own head. Which was where he’d been when you’d left the building. Nothing had changed since he’d been home.

He didn’t get like this often.

In your entire marriage, he’d only been like this once or twice and you weren’t digging it this time especially. When Steve got stuck in his head, he could stay there for a while and nothing you did could pull him free.

When he said your name, your words died on your lips.

He wouldn’t look at you, not at first. Making you close your mouth and keep quiet. Wait, wonder what on earth was going through his head. What had happened? What he was going to be doing that he insisted upon doing alone?

When he finally spoke, he rested his palms on the bathroom counter. Leaning forward on those powerful hands on either side of you, his gaze focusing around the belt of your lavender fuzzy robe. “I don’t want to fight with you right now.”

You remained silent.

“I need to do this alone.” He told you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as you watched him. “It’s something that you cannot be with me for and I need Peter to stay here, in case something happens. You understand? Right? Please tell me you understand.”

You made a face. “Of course, I understand. I don’t like it. But I get it…I think it’s too soon. It’s too much of a risk. I don’t want you to go out tonight.”

And he got it. 

Steve understood, he understood every single concern you had and knew you had valid points. He knew he was acting too quickly. He knew he was being rash. It was a risk and yet, he was doing it, he was going out. Steve couldn’t not do this. But he needed you to understand. He needed you to know why, to even, dare he hope, support him. 

Big warm hands fell on your knees. 

Finally he looked up at you. He met your gaze and quietly confessed. “I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to do this after tonight. Everything seems to be falling into place and if I don’t try…I’m not going to have another chance, not one like this…you understand? Right?”

Yes you understood, probably more than you should have considering your age. Sometimes you felt as old as Steve. Which was weird, for someone your age. “You’re going to try and go get Bucky again? Aren’t you?”

He’d tried before, several times, failing each time.

Bucky had been moved, or he was seconds too late.

Now, Steve was the Director of Hydra, for the moment anyway. The security forces keeping an eye on him and protecting him wouldn’t let him slip away twice. 

If he was going to try this, again, now, he’d only get one chance.

Because he didn’t want to talk about it with you. Because he didn’t have half the answers he should have and because he knew that you were a bad liar, he said nothing. Electing, instead, to cup your face between his hands and softly kiss you. Slot his mouth against yours and encourage you to return the affection, with every soft movement of his lips. And how could you not? For days you’d been starved of the physical contact that the two of you shared so frequently. 

Your lives had been chaos, busy, exhausting for the past few days. Plus, it was taking some time for you to get used to hobbling around on one good foot and crutches.

You tried to move, tried to get closer to Steve.

You leaned forward, only to be stopped by him and have one hand leave your face, which led you to made a sad little noise of protest. His mouth however remained on yours as that hand came to rest on your leg, pushing your thigh back and in far from a romantic lust filled sort of way. Keeping your cast up on the counter surface.

“Come on Steve,” you whined against his mouth. “You aren’t going to hurt me.”

You could feel him hesitate but knew he needed it as much as you, especially now. You needed it as much as he needed it. Needed release and comfort and connection, in that way only the two of you could for one another.

Down your hands went to your robe’s sash and you unbelted it. Shrugging the fuzzy garment from your shoulders, allowing you to feel the deep bruises on your back that would be there for a long time more, from Steve and Pierce landing on you on the floor. Your front wasn’t feeling fantastic either. But, you wanted to feel him. You wanted to feel good, you wanted your lover to touch you again.

You took his hand from your face and placed it on your breast, squeezed his fingers till they cupped you. Squeezed until his thumb began to stroke your soft nipple. All as you kissed him softly. All as you let his mouth slowly explore yours and his tongue trace over your lips, your teeth and then brush against yours so leisurely.

“If someone comes by…” he breathed against your mouth. Flicking the tip of his tongue against your bottom lip. “…you have to tell them I’m out looking for snacks for you. You have to throw a fit and act like you’ll go crazy if I don’t find exactly what you want…you have to make them believe I’m out shopping for my young demanding unreasonable wife. You have to make it look good.”

In complete and total agreement, you nodded that you would. His thumb began to make your soft nipple tighten, ache around the golden bar through it and then the other. “Don’t worry. I’ll cover for you,” you promised, your hands making quick work of the buttons on his grey vest, of the buttons on his black shirt. Until Steve eventually shrugged out of both. His mouth never once leaving yours. His kiss evolving from something sweet and assuring, to something hungrier, needier.

Steve’s mouth moved. 

Hungrily, he kissed your chin and peppered kisses along your jaw. Tip of his tongue sliding down your neck and over your pulse. Against your collarbone he breathed, “Tell me if it hurts.” While his other hand held firm to your cast.

As if you’d ever ask him to stop.

“Ok,” you mindlessly agreed, your hands going to his head, sinking in his hair, pushing his head down to your breast.

Your husbands nimble tongue curled around one of your nipples and he was home. A breath hissed out through your clenched teeth as his mouth sucked in your breast, as that tongue curled around your nipple and toyed with your piercing.

“Shit that feels so good Steve…” you breathed out, your grip on his hair tightening. Every twist and tug and nip from him resulted in white hot pleasure racing down south. His other hand twisted and tugged on your other nipple, making you whine and shift around. Your cast kept your legs spread wide, so much so you could feel yourself grow wetter. “Come on Steve, stick it in. Please just do it. I can’t wait.”

In response, he sank his teeth into the flesh of your tit hard enough you knew there’d be a mark. Letting you know that he’d fuck you when he was ready. Not that it kept you from crying and making desperate little noises at him. Resulting in his other hand coming down on your other thigh, pressing your legs apart, spreading you wide up on the bathroom counter as he continued to torment your nipple.

“I love your breasts Doll,” Steve sighed, drawing back to look at the both of them.

Your nipples ached and throbbed hotly. One breast copiously wet from his recent attentions. Your nipples were both flushed, pert, taut. Yellow gold stood out in your sensitive flesh.

“So perky and plump. Just the right size and shape and those nipples. They make me hard. I love seeing them covered with my cum. Those little fucking bars. They make me want to do things to you.”

A blush heated your chest, neck and cheeks as you felt something wet trickle down between your cheeks, onto the counter. Being held open made you feel exposed, made you even more aroused. Unable to help yourself, you breathed out, “What kinda things?”

Even though you still were technically in your purple robe, Steve didn’t care. In a way, it framed you for him. Offered you up. Was like gift wrapping.

Slowly, methodically, Steve began to lick your nipples, his voice thickening as his accent grew more prominent with his growing arousal. “I want to tie you to our bed and screw you all night long. Watch them bounce with lil bells on them, so I can hear them too. I want cover them with my cum. When you’re outta that cast and your brother is away, I wanna spend a weekend at home with you wearing that little chain. The one that connects them an nothing else. So I can just bend you over whenever I want, till you’re screamin my name.” 

In response, you moaned. “Fuck that’s hot…I could be your sex slave. Totally at your mercy all weekend. Wet all fucking weekend. Covered in your jizz. On my knees or back, whenever your wanted.” Finding yourself even more turned-on by the idea, you sank back against the mirror. Your voice going lower as his soft languid licks turned into nips, and then a tug. His mouth closed over your nipple as you went on. “We could even do it in the back yard. We could do it on the back stairs. You could tie me to our bed and fuck me till I pass out. I could just sit on your dick and feed you dessert off my tits.”

For just a moment, Steve’s hands left your legs.

You heard the metallic jostle of his belt, fabric get adjusted and the familiar sound of a zipper. His movements were jerky, hurried. It did things to you. That you could make this man so out of his mind with desire still. That you could take him out of his head with a few words, a flash of skin.

The attention to your breasts was sloppy…wetter and with more teeth, as his focus was on freeing his painful erection.

Very close to his ear, you whispered. “Each morning, I’ll wake you up with a blowjob and at night, I’ll go to sleep with that big fat cock of yours inside me. Would you like that? Director?”

Steve’s head jerked up. Your nipple fell from his flushed wet lips. His blue eyes were wide and you knew you hit a button.

Licking your own lips, you leaned back as sexily as one could with a plaster cast covering their foot. Body tingling with awareness. Suddenly the fuzzy purple robe still covering your arms felt like too much. It was far too much clothing. However, to take it off would have just killed the moment. You were far too interested in seeing where this went, how far you could take it. Seeing Steve with his golden hair tousled and those eyes of his dark with lust. Shirtless so every last exquisite muscle was on full display for you and his pants down, exposing the deep lines of his pelvis that lead into boxer briefs only just hanging on. Perhaps a bit askew. 

“Director Rogers,” you purred, rolling that around on your tongue. Seeing his eyes narrow as you used his new title, tug at that plump lower lip with his teeth. Letting your good leg fall. You propped yourself back on the counter on your elbows, your breasts shifting. “Are you going to fuck your wife before you leave Director? You won’t leave her like this? Wet…aching…needy…so desperate for that thick dick…let me see it.” 

Wordlessly, Steve pushed the band of his briefs down and pulled out his weeping erection.

“Tonight, if your needy little wife goes to bed naked, will you wake her up and fill her up? Fill her up in every hole? Till the sheets are sticky with cum and it runs out of her all night? So she knows you still want her so much it hurts? To make up for leaving her behind tonight?”

Steve’s voice was low, pained, “God yes…”

Slipping your fingers down, you spread your intimate lips to reward Steve with a wet sound. One that made him whine and yourself hum.

“Oh Director Rogers…did you hear how wet your wife is?” To further the little game you were playing, you began to sink your fingers down into the slippery wetness that was dripping from you, still sliding down onto the counter. Your fingers began to rub circles around your folds, smear your arousal around. “Look at that director…look at that wet pussy so empty and desperate, so lonely. Can you make it better? Can your big fat cock fill it up? Make your little wife come, Director Rogers? Fuck her till she can’t remember her name and she’s leaking your cum?”

If Steve’s head exploded in that next second, he wouldn’t have been shocked.

It wasn’t until you said it, said it like that, used those words.

He was the director.

Steve was the Director of Hydra.

Steve didn’t know if you were doing it on purpose, if you knew what you were saying or what. All he knew was he didn’t have to worry. He didn’t have to be discreet. 

Who the hell cared if someone caught him leaving his house? He was the goddamn Director of Hydra. 

He wasn’t going to sneak out like he was doing something wrong. He wasn’t going out the back gate and running into the night, to steal his best friend back. He was the mother fucking director of Hydra. He didn’t have to sneak off to steal Bucky away from Colonel Karpov. They all worked for him. He could demand Bucky. He could walk right into that bank and demand they hand over the asset and he would. Hell, he could take the team with him. Because, he was Director Fucking Rogers.

Pierce was going to be in a coma for a long time and suddenly, the knowledge didn’t make him sick.

He was the director and god help Hydra.

This wasn’t a nightmare anymore, not his anyway.

“Put your foot up on the counter. Open those pretty legs and let your director see that perfect wet pussy. Show your new boss whose pussy this belongs to.” And fuck if those words didn’t feel so rewarding coming out. Steve enjoyed the way you wiggled to lift your other leg up, exposing your dripping cunt to him as he fisted himself. You probably didn’t even realize how much better you made him feel. “You gonna be good tonight? You gonna stay here and wait like instructed?”

Stepping forward, he stroked his mushroom head through the slippery folds of you and then pushed in, savoring the grunt it brought from you.

He watched your eyes roll up. He relished the way your tight walls clenched him, even though you were wet enough to take him in one swift thrust.

But no, not now.

You were hurt, no matter how much you assured him you were ok.

Bruises still decorated your body and he knew there was a reason you’d not taken your robe off. So inch by inch after inch, Steve sank in, pushed in, felt your snatch open for him as your body shook from the taking. 

“If you’re a good girl and follow your directors instructions and you go to bed without clothes on…he’ll surprise you….” And he was almost all the way in. Both his hands went to your thighs to hold them open, keep them spread, keeping your cast up and the broken bones supported by counter. 

The last thing he wanted was you in a cast longer. 

Sounds of your breathing deepening was music to his ears. Your taut nipples touching his chest was bliss. God those fucking golden bars. He’d never get tired of them. Just thinking about later, of you in bed beneath the sheets, nude, flesh on soft cotton. And then he was in. His balls touched the wet smear you’d made on the counter. “Your ass better be in bed when you see my car in the driveway. Peter too. If you’re a good girl and in bed, I’ll make you come all night.” He then began to move slowly, intentionally, knowing where your g-spot was and how, if he sank in just right…he could rub against it on the way in and out…how he could rub his pelvis against your clit. You wall’s clenched around him tightly as he moved, letting him know you were just as effected as him. “Do what your director says and he’ll fill your mouth till his balls slap your chin, fill your pussy and ass till you run over with cum. You want that Mrs Hydra? You want to make your director happy?” And what in the hell was wrong with him. Steve was coming at the thought. Pumping into you, as he pictured just what he was going to do to you when he got home. Hotness clawed into him, sweat sheened his skin as he painted your womb with his release, following him with a powerful climax of your own. Your body so desperate for it that it couldn’t hang on, not another second.

“Yes.” You nodded, desperate, eager and needing to make him happy, as you gasped and cried out. 

Steve captured your mouth in a searing kiss that stole away your breath. His hands remained on your thighs as he kept pumping, thrusting, powering into you. Making you whimper and cry as he kissed you, as you kissed him. Your hips jumping in response to the stimuli, your pelvis rubbing against him.

“Put on that little chain,” he ground out, kissing you back, down into the counter. Letting go of your good leg so he could reach up to take your breast. “The one that goes on the two gold bars. The one I like.”

A noise came from you. Maybe a cry or whine. Or something else.

And Steve fully intended to go again, once more take you on the bathroom counter.

Up till he caught a movement in the corner of his eye.

Behind him in the bedroom window was a face watching, a man’s face, clear as day, in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.

***

Unsure what he was more pissed off about, Steve walked silently into the backyard in his slacks. Now zipped up and buttoned. You having been placed into the scalding hot bathwater with enough bath-bombs to turn the Potomac purple, none the wiser. Was he particularly happy about having to cut things short? No. But he did have things to do. So, it was probably for the best, once he figured out who the hell was in his side yard watching the two of you together.

Which was very near the top of what had pissed him off.

Mostly, the fact that whoever the hell it was had seen you. Some strange man had seen you, mostly undressed. Watched him devour you, fuck you. Possibly seen what only Steve should have been allowed to see.

It had him clenching his fists and drawing ever closer towards the high pitched sounds of Peter’s voice.

Because, of course, Peter would have picked up on someone on the property, that close to the house. Especially since Peter wasn’t distracted. 

As if he were standing right by Peter, he heard his voice in the dark side yard as the young man scuffled with someone. He might as well have been behind your brother.

“…are you doing here! Why are you following my sister!”

Steve could not have been happier for the new moon either.

It was almost totally black outside.

As he swung by your tomato plants, he grabbed your little hand shovel.

More scuffling sounds were followed by grunting, heavy breathing from someone else.

“Stop fighting!” Peter hissed, “I don’t want to hurt you but I will!”

Turning the corner to the side yard, Steve caught a good eyeful with his enhanced senses. Enhanced vision letting him see Peter struggling with a man, a man that he recognized immediately from his reeducation.

He watched Peter try so hard to not hurt the man who never could seem to find a suit that fit. Or maybe he just couldn’t work an iron? 

Steve never figured it out.

But he did remember this man. Oh how he remembered him. This was the man who told him that he’d have to get married, produce enhanced sons and daughters for Hydra. This man wouldn’t feed him for weeks until he was on the floor, writhing in agony, from his enhanced needs demanding fuel. This man would pump him full of drugs to see what sort of effects they had for science, for curiosity, for no other reason than he could and did. This man hadn’t let him sleep for months at a time. When this man told him, he could either get married and father children for Hydra willingly, or be strapped down and stimulated like an animal for his biological sample. Steve had opted for the marriage.

Sensing him, Peter glanced up.

Because of course he’d notice the six foot plus pissed off super soldier in the dark side yard, between the two perfect houses.

Quickly, Peter let go of the man. Which gave the peeper enough time to wrestle free, get his balance and notice Steve. Right before he was shoved roughly, hard and suddenly into the side of Captain Hydra’s house. Air painfully escaped from his lungs.

“This is the man,” Peter hissed. “The one who went through my sisters desk and sent Director Pierce those pictures!”

Because of course Peter didn’t know.

Steve didn’t go around telling people. Detailing the months upon months upon endless months he’d spent being reeducated. It wasn’t exactly polite dinner conversation. Asking Peter to pass the peas while waxing on about how his bones were broken over and over, to study his accelerated healing and pound down his spirit, didn’t exactly pair up well.

Coughing, gasping, the man responded, “Captain Rogers…knows who I…am.”

Peter looked to Steve.

Steve glared daggers at the man whose name he never learned. Nor did he care. He stopped caring after a while, when he just wanted it to end. Up till he learned what they wanted from his body, with or without his help, unless he got with the program. When it became very clear that they could torture him forever and had no plans to let him die.

More gasping came from the man. “You failed…at being…Captain Hydra. You…should’ve given us…a child.”

Horrified, Peter’s mouth dropped, shocked.

Steve was neither horrified, nor shocked.

Of course he would be checked up on. Of course, he’d been married a while now and there was no kid. Hydra would have been curious.

Quietly, not looking away from the man, Steve told him. “You’re mistaken.” As the man gathered his breath back, Steve softy corrected. “It’s Director Rogers now.” 

And then, before Peter could recover from the horrifying realization of it all, Steve buried the hand trowel, five inches deep, in the man with the ill-fitting suits sternum. “You should have stayed the hell away from us.” After which, he twisted the garden tool, making Peter wince at the sickening crunching sound.

Watching the man closely, he softly instructed his brother. “Peter…go out front and tap on the window of the black suburban. Tell them I found an intruder in our back yard trying to break in.”

**Later…**

The Asset stared. 

Unfeeling.

Quiet.

Numb.

Confused. Blank. Unable to feel anything anymore, nothing, nada, unless it was pain.

And it was always pain. Blinding, excruciating pain.

Blood was everywhere.

Red was puddled on the floor. Crimson was splashed on equipment. Sprayed up the walls and dripping from the ceiling.

Unable to do more than watch, he observed the blonde man shoot the doctors in their white lab coats around the room. He watched the blonde man in grey pants with a big leather coat shoot Colonel Karpov between his eyes.

Guards were scattered around the floor of the bank vault.

It should have surprised him. 

It should have concerned him.

Yet, all he could do was watch as the man with short blonde hair walked over to the colonel and once more, discharged a round, making the colonel’s body jerk.

Gunpowder hung in the air. His ears rung from the sounds of gunfire in the small soundproofed room. Rattling each door to each safety deposit box in the closed bank, it felt like.

He should have been worried, concerned.

A man with a gun had killed everyone in the room.

That was concerning.

Yet…all the Asset could do was watch, stare, observe. No one told him to move or act. A part of his brain, long hidden from time and pain, seemed to think that this man meant him no harm. However, that thought was lost in a sea of soupy fog that meant nothing.

Death wouldn’t be so bad.

Death would be welcome.

At least in death, all the pain would end.

And then the blonde man approached him. 

Gun gone, hidden away in the man’s coat. 

With something akin to gentleness, he unstrapped the Asset’s flesh arm from the chair, and then the straps around his torso. 

One sleeve of his black shirt was gone. His metal arm exposed, the man’s blue eyes stared at it for a second before looking down at him, gently telling him. “You’re coming with me Bucky. We’re going home.”


	3. Epilogue

**A few weeks later…**

Bucky heard Steve get dropped off out front.

Bucky knew that the adolescent male who sat across from him, the brother-in-law of Steve, heard it too. Was enhanced just as he was, although far younger and more innocent. Which would change, he knew. After the young man known as Peter had killed a few more people, fought some more, been injured some more. Peter would change. Much like they all changed. Much like Steve had changed.

Steve being a blurry memory.

Foggy.

Hazy.

A memory though and Bucky clung to that, as he continued to polish one of the old rusty weapons Steve had brought him from the armory.

It kept him busy. It kept his hands full. It distracted him a bit, even if every movement he made was purely from muscle memory.

Every morning he went running with Steve. He spent his day with you. Helping you around, driving you places and just keeping an eye on things. Watchful. Always watching.

He watched your neighbors. He watched the mailman and delivery people. He knew when they left in the mornings and came back in the afternoons.

When Steve and Peter returned home, they’d eat and then work out and go over what had happened at the new Hydra Headquarters, what was happening with Hydra and the resistance.

Not that evening though.

No.

Things were different.

Peter had returned from dropping you off to help out a woman who was heavily involved in the resistance. Steve had late meetings. Which left him and the boy. Peter. Peter Parker, as the boy told him several times those first few days, as if he wouldn’t remember, full of excited nervous energy.

He didn’t mind Peter.

Peter who stood at his side at the table in the dining room, emptying a paper sack full of plastic containers that smelled extraordinary and familiar, at the same time.

Peter lived downstairs in the finished den. 

Peter was friendly and happy. Bucky didn’t mind him.

His attention didn’t look up from the weapon that he began to oil, as Steve’s voice drifted into the house. 

Peter called out, unnecessarily, where they were as Bucky oiled and cleaned the many parts of the rifle on the table.

Steve from so long ago.

Steve from Brooklyn.

Little Steve who was now big Steve. Kind Steve. It was the same Steve.

While he didn’t really remember him. Steve was familiar. Things he spoke about were familiar. Some nights he didn’t have nightmares. On those rare nights, he would dream about a smaller skinnier Steve. On rare nights, he would dream about the war and other men, friends, comrades.

When he would run with Steve, work out in the evenings…it was familiar. It felt right. It felt like something that he had previously done.

Steve’s feet were heavy from his weight as they drew closer. Until Steve stepped into the dining room.

“That smells great Peter. Where’s your sister? Hey Buck.”

In response, Bucky made a noise. 

Eyes focused as he oiled each part.

The wooden stock and metal parts were familiar, comforting.

Peter’s voice held no hint of deceit as he finished unpacking the small feast he’d brought back, after dropping you off for the evening. “Mrs. Rumlow needed help tonight. One of the girls is sick so she volunteered to help out again. Apparently, there’s some big fish that Mrs. Rumlow is hoping to track down.”

A pleased noise came from Steve.

You were still hobbling around on your cast for two more weeks. However, you helped out the Rumlow Widow, with her various projects to gain information and money and supplies for the resistance. From what Bucky could tell, she was heavily involved with the resistance and she seemed nice enough. She was lying about something. However, her dedication to the cause was true and she did so much for the resistance, that he kept it to himself. Whatever she was withholding wasn’t enough to make him want to tell Steve. Not when it was hard enough for him to speak. Words didn’t come easily yet. He wasn’t about to waste them.

Not when there was a far bigger question he had wondered about since you’d been home.

What exactly was it that you were doing?

“What time is she getting done?” Steve asked, as his stomach growled in response to the glorious smells that reminded him so much of the Barnes home in Brooklyn, all those years ago.

Grabbing his glass of water, Peter quick answered before taking a sip. “Eleven…twelve or so. She’s manning the phones tonight.”

The phones.

Bucky wondered.

His voice sounded so foreign. It felt so abnormal to speak, to ask questions. Talking. It felt wrong to ask when not being told.

Nodding in response, Steve leaned over to peer in the plastic containers that covered the center of the table. 

“What’s a nine hundred number?”

Perplexed, Steve glanced up.

Peter spat his water out all over the pieces of the rifle. Coughed, sputtered and gasped. Face flushing red as Steve reached over to pat his brother-in-law on the back.

Impassively, Bucky stared.

Hoarsely, Peter coughed and sipped his glass of water.

“Peter?”

Steve’s voice was low, calm, authoritative.

Seeing the water spray all over the table and parts of the rifle, Bucky stared as he attempted to remember where you got the towels from. The water had to be cleaned up.

Steve’s head tilted, his blue eyes electric, curious. “Peter? What’s a nine hundred number and why is Bucky asking about it?” 

More coughing.

Throat clearing followed.

Gulping of water, as Bucky got up and walked over to a stack of table linens, down at the end of the table with flowers all over them. Surely, they could be used as rags?

“Um…” a high-pitched giggle followed as Steve narrowed his eyebrows, sensing some manner of something. “Well…it’s a phone line that people can call for entertainment and it…um…” A higher-pitched noise followed that made Bucky frown. The linens were silk. A perfect absorbency for cleaning water from the oiled gun parts. “…well, um…Mrs. Rumlow has been operating a nine hundred number to get information from various Hydra Officials. Tonight she’s talking to the weapons dealer Justin Hammer. He gave up all that information about his new tech.”

Bucky began to mop up the water Peter spat out.

Peter pointedly didn’t look at Steve as he moved to help Bucky.

Steve’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What sort of phone line is it?”

Another high-pitched noise followed from Peter.

Steve cocked his head.

Bucky mopped up the water.

“Peter?”

“Is it really important?”

“Peter.”

Bucky wiped at the wooden stock gently, carefully, softly even. He’d worked so hard to get the rust from the metal of the weapon. The last thing he wanted was more rust.

Pleadingly, Peter looked to Bucky who was busy with the drying before he wiped his hands on his khakis. His gaze returned to Steve, who appeared to be catching on a bit quicker than he was comfortable even trying to explain. Leading him to finally say quietly, “Don’t make me say it…”

***

Tongue sticking out between your lips, headset on your head while Justin Hammer yammered on about some problem he was having with his mother, you adding yet one more black crystal to the hideous neon orange plaster cast on your foot, with a little dollop of hot glue.

A noise indicating that you both totally related, understood and sympathized with the arms dealer came from you, as you blew on the half-done addition to your cast.

By the time your shift in the information gathering call center was over, you intended to have a black sparkly cast. 

Along with dinner, you’d brought a dozen baggies of black crystals and a hot glue gun. Plus your favorite cool and refreshing beverage for the evening of calls. Ferreting information from the lonely hearts among Hydra could parch a girl. Which led you to packing an extra bottle of water too. The information was well worth it. But, the last thing you needed was a sore throat at the HOA meeting tomorrow.

After blowing on the hot glue for a sufficient amount of time, while asking Mister Hammer how his relationship with his father was, knowing that was ripping open a wound that would make him even more vulnerable, you tapped at the gem stone you’d bought earlier in the day. It wasn’t going anywhere.

You’d asked Bucky what he thought of the black. You took his silence as approval.

You didn’t mind Bucky.

Hell, you were growing fond of the assassin. 

Sure, he wasn’t much of a talker and all kinds of intense. But he was incredibly patient with you and Peter. Having him around seemed to lift a boulder off Steve’s back that none of you knew was there. You’d caught the two super soldiers talking quietly on a few occasions and a sense of wellbeing always followed. 

You didn’t feel quite so vulnerable with the dark-haired soul in your home.

Not that Bucky made everything well in paradise. Quite the opposite actually. 

Steve’s need to pillage and salt the earth seemed to double. He eagerly devoured all the information you brought him after you helped out at the Hydra Hotline, as you began to call it, making you want to help out even more. 

If anything, having Bucky at his side made Steve even more thirsty for revenge.

You also had a sneaking suspicion, that he was getting into Hydra and Pierce’s databases and records too. None of which could have been anywhere near optimistic.

Somehow, your situation felt as if it had gone from a drop in the bucket eventual suicide mission, to maybe…just maybe…you and Peter and Steve wouldn’t die so horribly and you could possibly do some sort of good through underhanded and violent ways? Once you were out of your cast and back on two feet anyway.

Sounds of a door slamming upstairs got your attention.

Somewhat surprised, you glanced upwards along with Juanita, who sat in the workstation beside you.

The basement of the Widow Rumlow’s house had been turned into the call center with top of the line equipment, thanks to the resistance, who heard every word in real time thanks to a certain fugitive billionaire. 

Muffled sounds of shouting, yelling and stomping traveled through the soundproofed floor making you snicker. 

Every once in a blue moon someone’s husband or boyfriend would show up, outraged and drag them out.

Reaching for your next crystal, Juanita giggled as her hands quickly knit a bright pink sock for her granddaughter. Headset on her head too, as the computer program on the monitor in front of her recorded her conversation. 

She covered the mouthpiece of her headset to click her tongue. “Someone’s husband is coming in hot tonight.”

“A solid ten at least,” you agreed, covering your own mouthpiece and squirting some melted glue on your cast, then setting the black stone down in place most carefully. Sounds of the feet stomping on the floor above let you know where the angry individuals were, leading to soft chatter between the handful of other women downstairs, everyone curious just whom would come down the stairs.

You weren’t worried.

Peter and Steve knew where you were and when your shift was done, you’d text Peter to come pick you up. Just as you’d done for your other nights helping out.

As Justin went on over your headset about how he could never ever make his father happy, like ever, sounds of the door to the basement getting slammed open drifted down. Along with the Widow Rumlow’s voice, as she did her best to appease whomever’s spouse was losing their damn mind.

Funnily enough, it kinda sounded a little like Steve.

Although that was absurd because you’d told him what you’d be doing. 

Of course, when you glanced over your shoulder to see Steve coming down the basement stairs in the midnight blue suit you’d picked out for him that morning, you were moderately surprised.

The Widow Rumlow was hot on his heels and Bucky was following her quietly, as if he were out for a lovely evening stroll.

Steve couldn’t believe it.

He could not goddamn believe it.

You’d told him you’d be helping out with the hotline and getting information. You failed to mention that it was a phone-sex hotline. Granted, Peter explained that most of what you did was just listen to the guys complain or talk, and there was no actual sex.

But still, that wasn’t the point.

Whatever Steve had expected, this was not it.

Cerulean eyes scanned a basement full of technology and women plus one dude, none of whom looked remotely sexy or were doing anything slightly indecent. Several women were knitting or coloring or clipping coupons. One lady was even doing her nails while the guy was building a model airplane.

When his eyes found your confused gaze, he pointed right at you and barked. “Take that thing off your head and let’s go! You’re leaving and never coming back to this den of depravity!”

Both of your eyebrows rose.

When Steve noticed your plaster cast was up on your desk, he added, for good measure as he headed your way like a storm rolling in. “And you better not be trying to take that cast off again! So help me god woman!”

As Steve stormed, Bucky glanced around, looked in silence, taking everything in as heads turned to Steve, heading your way on his war path.

“Steve!” You shouted, hand covering your mouthpiece. “What are you doing? I told you I would be here!”

Not that Steve was having any of that. Nope. “You didn’t say what you’d be doing!” He screeched, the widow right behind him, doing her very best to calm the entire situation with the same success she would have in stopping a hurricane.

Bucky continued to watch and observe. No one in the room seemed to be a threat. Therefore, there was no need to kill anyone. Not yet anyway.

“Director Rogers…Director Rogers…” called the widow, hurrying right after him. She winced when Steve yanked your headset right off and scooped you right up out of your chair, flinging you over his broad shoulder and grabbing your big bag.

The widow managed to put the call on hold, as you shrieked right back, among all the openly watching eyes. Because at that point, it would have been hard to not watch the unfolding scene. 

“For fucks sake Steve! Are you crazy!” Your hands went down and gripped into the back of his jacket, as you braced yourself. You knew Steve wouldn’t drop you. But this was a bit much, even for him. Still though, you were relieved when you felt his arm hook over the backs of your thighs.

“I’m not crazy! It is not crazy to not want one’s wife dirty talking all of Hydra!” he shot right back. Shoving your hot glue gun, all the little black gemstones and bottles of beverages into your bag.

You shrieked in outraged frustration.

The Widow Rumlow attempted to help. “Director Rogers, I can assure you, most of what we do here is just active listening. There is very little sexual discussion per phone call.”

Not that she helped.

Both you and Steve hardly noticed.

Steve did tell her, as he buttoned your handbag shut. “Doesn’t matter! She’s not coming back! You’ll have to find something decent for my wife to do to help out with! Because it sure as hell is not going to be helping the enemy masturbate!”

Not that she was surprised.

The Widow Rumlow had thought it was odd, that Steve Rogers would allow his young wife to help out, in this capacity. And hearing the finality in his tone as he turned and headed out the way he came, past the volunteers, well she pressed her manicured hands to her forehead. Having no words.

Which was fine.

You had plenty of words. “Oh mylanta Steve! You’re acting CRAZY! Have you lost your mind? Steve? STEVE!”

Never one to let you have the last word when you were being particularly unreasonable, Steve just countered as he passed Bucky. “Oh you think I’m being crazy now? Just wait till we get home!”

Bucky watched.

He took a step to follow Steve up the staircase. All as you kicked and banged on Steve’s back with your small fists, shrieking out in outrage at his utter audacity, when the Widow Rumlow stepped beside him. “Would you lock the upstairs door on your way out?”

Wordlessly, Bucky gave her a nod in response.

She wasn’t lying now.

Before the Widow Rumlow went back to your work station, to finish your call with Justin Hammer, she gently patted Bucky’s shoulder in gratitude. “Thank you Jimmy. Have a good night. I’ll see you and Mrs. Rogers tomorrow.”

Without a word or glance at the woman, Bucky followed Steve up the stairs as you continued to angrily shout. You continued to pound on his back with no result.

Bucky didn’t give the woman a second thought.

Not till he reached the top of the basement steps.

She’d called him Jimmy.

That was odd.

No one had called him that in so long.

So very long.

He couldn’t remember the last person to call him that. 

He’d never been Jimmy. He was rarely James, only with his family was he James.

Steve called him Bucky. 

Bucky, or Buck.

Rarely ever James and never Jimmy.

Jimmy made him think of laughter, soft voices and the smell of flowers. Jimmy brought back memories of a family home full of warmth. Rebecca. Long brown hair and big blue eyes. She called him Jimmy in jest. She called him Jimmy when she wanted to get a reaction from him.

Only she called him Jimmy.

Bucky stopped.

She was not the woman downstairs. She would have been gone by now, gone or old. She could not have been the woman downstairs.

“Crap…we can’t go home with them.”

Bucky looked over at the boy. Peter.

Peter came to his side, shaking his head of messy brown hair. 

Your voice continued to shout in outrage as it drifted further away, through the house, ever closer to the front door.

“They’re gonna be up fighting all night and I can’t listen to that…I can’t do it. The shouting isn’t so bad but I can’t listen to the rest. I can’t listen to Steve do that to my sister all night. I don’t have it in me.”

Bucky continued to stare at Peter.

Peter shook his head and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got thirty-two bucks. You got any money?”

Silence.

“That’s ok. We don’t need much money,” Peter added. “I know a great place to eat that’s cheap that has big portions. After that…we’ll just see where the night takes us. Sound good?”

Silence.

“Great. Let’s go. You like Italian? Right?”


End file.
